Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
An underground tunnel that archaeologists believe was meant to imitate the underworld has been found under a pyramid at Teotihuacan in Mexico. Electrical scans taken at the ancient city revealed the extent of the mysterious tunnel.
"The finding confirms that Teotihuacans reproduced the same pattern of tunnels associated with their great monuments, whose function had to be the emulation of the underworld," archaeologist Veronica Ortega, who was involved in the discovery, said in a statement1.
[...] " The function of the tunnel may have been to reproduce the underworld, a world where life, animals and plants originated. It's possible that it was used purely for rituals, as part of ceremonies to celebrate the agricultural cycles," Ortega said.
1 In Spanish.
Source: https://www.rt.com/viral/395523-mexican-pyramid-underworld-tunnel/
(Score: 5, Informative) by requerdanos on Friday July 07 2017, @05:50PM
The Spanish headline of the inah.gob.mx (~= National Institute of Anthropology and History . Gov . Mexico) article says something more along the lines of "INAH Specialists Locate Possible Tunnel Underneath The Plaza and Pyramid of the Moon, in Teotihuacan" which sounds a little less definite. "Locate Possible Tunnel," from "localizan posible túnel."
Though "Google Translate" does indeed return this translation, I would say it's closer to "The finding would confirm (confirmaría, not confirma) that the Teotihuacans reproduced the same pattern of tunnels associated with their great monuments, whose function must have been the emulation of the underworld," also a little less certain. If I feed that sentence ("El hallazgo confirmaría...") up through the word "patrón" into Google Translate, I notice that it does properly translate it as "would confirm."
I'm no language expert, but I think they're excited that the big indicated cavity might be a tunnel.