Specialists from Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) introduced this week that they’ve recorded 16 petroglyphs and cave work courting from prehistory and the Mesoamerican Postclassic interval (AD900-AD1521) positioned on two cliffs close to the Tula River and the La Requena Dam, within the state of Hidalgo.
The invention comes on the heels of different latest discoveries of Mesoamerican and colonial-era websites and artefacts throughout archaeological salvage work related to planning a brand new 232km passenger rail line between Mexico Metropolis and Querétaro. Earlier this month, INAH revealed the invention of a 1,000-year-old Toltec altar close by, on the Tula Chico website.
The positioning of the latest rock artwork discovery is considered one of 4 lively excavations alongside the Querétaro route, the place building started in April 2025, with present progress at round 10% of the whole venture. In October 2025, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo introduced a change to the railway path to protect this heritage website, given the impossibility of relocating the work to a museum.
The positioning was registered within the Seventies as a part of the Tula Archaeological Undertaking, when a painted ingredient depicting a deer was discovered, and it has since been referred to as El Venado. In an announcement, an INAH spokesperson mentioned: “The placement of the art work suggests a mythical-religious objective, maybe associated to astronomical or calendrical phenomena.”
The figures present in what INAH describes as a rock shelter are putting. They embrace one carrying what seems to be a macana (a sort of membership) with a headdress and goggles harking back to Tláloc, the Aztec god of rains, storms and fertility, who is commonly related to caves and comes.
In the identical rock shelter, the institute recognized the stylised picture of an anthropomorphic determine rendered in pink, in addition to a picture resembling a snake or lightning bolt. The work have been made with mineral or vegetable pigments, whereas the petroglyphs have been made utilizing pointillism. In accordance with INAH, a number of the artworks are greater than 4,000 years previous.
Archaeologists within the salvage workforce say the work are in good situation. They estimate that these of pre-Hispanic origin are probably associated to the ultimate stage of Tula, the good Toltec capital that left huge stays stuffed with monuments and creative treasures.
Among the many figures discovered close to the Tula River are a illustration of a deer and a determine with fangs, antennae, a breastplate and goggles, much like these of Tláloc, with bird-like legs, harking back to representations made by the Mogollon tradition, which inhabited the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, and whose artwork has been discovered at websites in Puebla.
A determine with an anthropomorphic face and hair, with 4 legs resembling these of a chook or the hooves of a horse, that seemingly dates from the time of contact with the Spanish, was additionally recognized. Whereas the work and petroglyphs have been solely lately recognized formally, in response to INHA, they’d beforehand recognized the area’s native communities.
In accordance with José-Miguel Perez Gomez, an professional on Latin American rock artwork, the invention represents “a transformative milestone for Mexican archaeology and rock artwork research”.
The findings are exceptionally vital, he tells The Artwork Newspaper, due to its “huge chronological span, documenting human exercise from over 4,000 years in the past via the Mesoamerican Postclassic and into the early colonial interval. By offering a steady file of cultural evolution,” he says, “the location permits researchers to analyse the transition of symbolic languages and creative methods inside a single geographic context.”
Perez Gomez provides that the location’s iconography “suggests deep-rooted cultural exchanges between central Mexico and the Mogollon cultures of the north. Positioned close to the Tula River, the location capabilities as a lithic archive of formality life and environmental interplay. This discovery not solely enriches our understanding of regional pre-Hispanic heritage but in addition reinforces the Tula Valley’s standing as a essential hall for long-term cultural synthesis and non secular expression.”
