Researchers Unearth Mysterious Structure Beneath Maya Ball Court

Researchers have found a mysterious ancient structure beneath a Maya ball court in Mexico. Located in the state of Campeche, these ruins are among the numerous discoveries made during a survey of the region, according to a statement from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

The Maya are known for their ball games, which they played with rubber balls on specially built courts. The ball court’s presence helped researchers hypothesize more broadly about the site’s significance.

“Ball courts are normally found only at major Maya sites, which were centers of the regional political organization,” excavation director Ivan Šprajc, an archaeologist at the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies in Slovenia, tells Live Science’s Laura Geggel. He adds that the mysterious building beneath the court was “evidently a very important structure.”

Researchers stumbled upon the structure in question while excavating the ball court. Its walls were covered with the remains of painted stucco. According to the team, it likely dates to between 200 and 600 C.E., during the Early Classic period.

Still, many questions remain. As Šprajc tells Live Science, “Only further excavations may reveal the shape of that underlying building and what its function was.”

At the same site, researchers found a ceremonial center with walls measuring more than 40 feet tall, suggesting the buildings may have been sociopolitically significant.

In recent years, researchers have made numerous exciting discoveries in the Balam Kú Biosphere Reserve, which is characterized by wetlands, lowlands, streams and rocky areas, per INAH. In 2023, airborne imaging surveys revealed a larger city hidden in the region: The ancient site, which researchers dubbed Ocomtún, contained multiple pyramids dating to the Classic period (roughly 200 to 900 C.E.).

One of the region’s other newly discovered sites once housed a rectangular water reservoir and a 52-foot pyramid. Atop the pyramid, the team found an offering: a pointed flint blade and ceramic fragments. Researchers identified one of the fragments as a leg of a ceramic animal—maybe an armadillo or lowland paca, a large rodent.

These offerings are thought to date to the Late Postclassic period, which lasted from 1250 until 1524 (the years before Spanish colonists arrived). By this time, Maya society in the region had declined due to “overpopulation, soil depletion, climatic change (prolonged droughts) and destructive warfare,” Šprajc tells Live Science.

He adds: “The offering indicates that even after most of the Classic period Maya settlements had been abandoned, small and impoverished human group[s] were still rambling around, putting offerings on or near the buildings of their forebears.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.