Murals found on a buried Mexican pyramid reveal how the average Maya lived about 1,350 years ago – shedding light on aspects of Maya society that are “virtually unknown”

The everyday life of ancient Mayans has been a subject of speculation for many generations, mostly because there are very little records of this aspect of the old society.

Most depictions that have endured up to this day are of official matters, and do not represent the actions and behaviors of the common folk.

The recently discovered murals now provide archaeologists and historians with a wealth of information on the life of an average Mayan citizen.

The murals were uncovered during the excavation of a pyramid mound structure at the ancient Maya site of Calakmul, Mexico (near the border with Guatemala)

The murals were found on the walls of one layer of the mound structure — Maya built over the top of older structures, creating buildings in layers like onions, Martin explained. While other layers were scraped up and destroyed in the effort to build over them, the layer with the murals appears to have been carefully preserved, with a layer of clay put over the murals, ostensibly to protect them.

This careful preservation “might suggest that it was something pretty special,” said Simon Martin of the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, who studied the paintings and hieroglyphs depicted in the murals.

The images on the mural show people engaged in mundane activities, such as preparing food. Hieroglyphic captions accompany each image, labeling each individual. In each case the term “aj,” meaning “person,” is used and followed by the word for a foodstuff or material. For example, the terms “aj ul” (”maize-gruel person”) shows a man with a large pot, dish and spoon with another man drinking from a bowl, and the term “aj mahy” (tobacco person) depicts two men, one holding a spatula and the other a pot that likely holds a form of the tobacco leaf.

Such scenes have never been seen in surviving Mayan paintings before, though some parts of quotidian Mayan culture have survived through the ages with the remaining Mayan populations) and the hieroglyphs for some words (such as “tobacco” and “maize-gruel”) were already known. Other hieroglyphs, though, were new to researchers — of particular importance were finding the words for maize itself and salt, which were known to be key staples of the Mayan diet.

Martin and his colleagues are not yet sure what the structure was or why the mural was painted and preserved. But they hope to learn more as they continue to excavate more layers of the pyramid and uncover more of the mural.