Excavations in the ancient Honduran city have borne their first fruits - many wonderful stone artifacts of a mysterious and as yet undefined pre-Columbian civilization have been found. A joint team of archaeologists from the United States and Honduras discovered 200 sculptures at the foot of a large earthen mound.
The recovered items, some of which were not broken, were sent by helicopter to the laboratory, which is located near the city of Katakamas. It was recently built specifically for the study and storage of objects found in the settlement.
The head of the research team, archaeologist Chris Fisher (Colorado State University at Fort Collins) noted that the items were found in a cache, "offrend." Caches have been found in eastern Honduras before, but this is the first to be excavated by professionals.
It turned out that all the items were neatly placed together and at approximately the same time on a previously prepared surface of red clay. They were positioned around an enigmatic sculpture of a vulture with partially spread wings. Around were placed ritual stone vessels, whose edges were decorated with carvings with images of vultures and snakes.
Here was found the head of a "werewolf jaguar" (which gave the name to the settlement), probably a shaman in a transcendental state, half animal, half human. The items probably date us to the period 1100-1520.
Around the central group of objects, Fischer and his colleagues discovered many stone "metate", which in appearance resemble curved tables with three legs. These "metate" are used to grind corn, but the ones found in this cache are larger.
In length it reaches approx. 2 meters, which is rather inconvenient for its intended use. So it was probably used for ritual reasons. Archaeologists found it broken into 6 parts, despite the fact that this item is by no means fragile.
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Perhaps, Mr. Fischer believes, it was smashed for ritual purposes and this leads him to believe that other fragments from the cache were also deliberately smashed. Ancient people throughout America often participated in the deliberate destruction of various objects, including. in "killing" pots (when a hole was made in the bottom), before they were placed in tombs.
Thus, perhaps the city itself was abandoned after the "closure" of such a ritual cache, although this, of course, is pure speculation. It is not known why the ancient city was abandoned. Perhaps this was due to diseases that the merchants who sailed along the river could reward the inhabitants of this inner part of the Mosquito.
At the time of the first contacts of Europeans with the inhabitants of America, Mayan and Chibchan traders in large canoes plowed the coastal waters, linking into a single trading network the regions remote from each other, incl. and Mosquito.
Sailing along the river from the sea to the inner regions of Mosquito in search of cocoa, macaw feathers and other valuable goods, merchants could bring in new diseases unknown to the local residents.
Smallpox, measles and influenza spread rapidly across the Caribbean, causing death for a huge number of Aboriginal people. Whether this was the reason for the desolation of "Jaguar City" or not, we do not yet know. In any case, the city was abandoned forever about 500 years ago.
