The greatness of the ancient nation always amazes. The Maya, for example, are known to build pyramids from the ashes of volcanic eruptions after a disaster.
Akira Ichikawa, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, has found evidence of the Mayans returning to devastated parts of Central America after a catastrophic volcanic eruption, much faster than previously thought.
In his paper published in the Cambridge University Press Site Cambridge Core, he describes a study of the area around what was once the site of San Andrés in the Zapotitán Valley, in what is now El Salvador.
Previous research has shown that in AD 539, the Ilopango volcano erupted in what is now known as the Tierra Blanca Joven eruption. It was the largest volcanic eruption in Central America in the last 10,000 years, and the largest on Earth in the last 7,000 years.
The explosion was so powerful that it covered the area around the volcano with waist-high ash for 35 kilometers. The eruption also left a deep hole that is now a crater lake.
Mayan pyramids. Photo: Phys.org
Quoted from Phys.org, the eruption also greatly affected the Mayan civilization. Settlements around mountains are gone, and temperatures are getting colder in the Northern Hemisphere. Due to a lack of evidence, historians have debated for years about how quickly the Maya returned to the area.
Most estimate, the possibility of the Mayans returning to their area takes hundreds of years. But in this new study, Ichikawa describes evidence of the Mayans returning to the site between 30 and 80 years after the eruption. They not only returned, but also built a great pyramid using ashes and earth.
To learn more about what was happening in the area around the site, during 2015 to 2019, Ichikawa collected and analyzed samples from the soil and from the Campana structure, a pyramid that sits on top of a large platform. He found that work on the structure appeared to have begun some 30 years after the eruption, although it could have been as long as 80 years.
Moreover, the data shows that the return of the Mayans to the area was fairly rapid. Quite a number of people survived the explosion. Ichikawa estimates it was likely that people built the pyramids as offerings to appease the gods who had shown their anger by triggering volcanic eruptions.