Archaeologists in Mexico have discovered a 1,400-year-old tomb from the Zapotec culture that features well-preserved details, including a statue of a wide-eyed owl with a man in its beak, multicolored wall paintings and calendar carvings.
Officials found the tomb after following up on an anonymous tip about looting at the site. Their investigation revealed “the most significant archaeological discovery of the last ten years in Mexico,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo announced. Press conference on January 23 in spanish.
The tomb was discovered in San Pablo Huitzo, a municipality in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, in 2025. It dates to about 600 AD, when the indigenous Zapotec people — also known as the “Cloud People” — flourished in the area. The Zapotec civilization originated around 700 BC and collapsed as a result of the Spanish conquest in 1521. Hundreds of thousands Zapotec-speaking people still live in Mexico today.
At the entrance to the newly announced tomb, archaeologists found a large carved owl whose beak opens to reveal the painted face of a Zapotec lord. In ancient Zapotec culture, the owl represented death and power, suggesting that it held in its mouth a portrait of an ancestor that the tomb honors, according to a translated translation declaration from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
Inside the tomb, the threshold between the two chambers boasts an elaborately carved doorway. Above it is a horizontal beam of stone slabs engraved with “calendar names” — a naming system in which deities and important people were given a specific symbol associated with their date of birth. On the sides of the door were carved figures of a man and a woman, possibly representing ancestors buried in a tomb or a palace guard, according to a statement by INAH.
Multicolored wall paintings in white, green, red and blue have been preserved on the walls of the burial chamber. They show a funeral procession of people carrying bags of “copal,” a tree resin that was burned as incense during ceremonies in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica.
The highly decorated tomb is “an exceptional discovery for its level of preservation and for what it reveals about Zapotec culture: its social organization, its burial rituals and its worldview, preserved in its architecture and wall paintings.” Claudia Curiel de IcazaMexico’s culture minister said in a statement.
An interdisciplinary team from INAH is currently working to preserve and protect the tomb, and further research will look at the ceramic evidence, iconography and the handful of human bones recovered from the tomb.
The tomb of Huitzo joins ka a dozen other ancient Zapotec tombs discovered in Oaxaca in the past decade, many of which were looted before archaeologists could study them. But even though some information about the ancient Zapotec civilization has been lost to looting, the Huitzo tomb is “a source of pride for Mexicans; a testament to the greatness of Mexico,” Sheinbaum said.
Leave a Reply