A University of Colorado Boulder-led team excavating¹ a Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic² eruption³ 1,400 years ago has unexpectedly hit an ancient white road that appears to lead to and from the town, which was frozen in time by a blanket of ash. The road, known as a "sacbe," is roughly 6 feet across and is made from white volcanic ash from a previous eruption that was packed down and shored up along its edges by residents living there in roughly A.D. 600, said CU-Boulder Professor Payson Sheets, who discovered the buried village known as Ceren near the city of San Salvador in 1978. In Yucatan Maya, the word "sacbe" (SOCK'-bay) literally⁴ means "white way" or "white road" and is used to describe elevated ancient roads typically lined with stone and paved with white lime（熟石灰） plaster（石膏，灰泥） and that sometimes connected temples, plazas⁶ and towns.

The sacbe at the buried village of Ceren -- which had canals of water running on each side -- is the first ever discovered at a Maya archaeology⁷（考古学） site that was built without bordering paving stones, said Sheets. The road was serendipitously⁸ discovered by the team while digging a test pit through 17 feet of volcanic ash in July to analyze⁹ agricultural activity on the edges of Ceren, considered the best preserved Maya village in Central America.

"Until our discovery, these roads were only known from the Yucatan area in Mexico and all were built with stone linings¹⁰, which generally preserved well," said Sheets of CU's anthropology¹¹ department. "It took the unusual preservation¹² at Ceren to tell us the Maya also made them without stone. I'd like to say we saw some anomaly（异常，不规则） in the ground-penetrating radar¹³ data that guided us to the Ceren sacbe, but that was not the case. This was a complete surprise."

The sacbe was struck almost dead-on by the excavators of the 3-meter by 3-meter test pit, said Sheets, with the full width of road visible. In order to follow the sacbe, two subsequent test pits were excavated¹⁴ to the north and confirmed the sacbe had a minimum length of at least 148 feet long -- about half the length of a football field.

The sacbe appears to be headed toward two Ceren ceremonial structures less than 100 feet away -- buildings that were unearthed¹⁵ in Ceren by Sheets and his team in 1991. One structure is believed to have been used by a female shaman. The adjacent（临近的） community ceremonial structure contained evidence -- including the bones of butchered deer, a deer headdress painted red and blue and a large alligator-shaped pot -- that large quantities of food and drink were being prepared and dispensed¹⁶ to villagers in the town plaza⁵ during what Sheets believes was a crop-harvesting ceremony.

"We know there was a celebration going on when the eruption hit," said Sheets. "And we've found no evidence of anyone going back to their houses, gathering¹⁷ up valuables, and fleeing, because all the household doors were tied shut. We think people may have left the plaza and run south, possibly on the sacbe, because the danger was to the north."

Radiocarbon dates from Ceren indicate the eruption occurred in roughly A.D. 630, and CU researchers have even pinpointed¹⁸ the month and time of day the fiery¹⁹ mass of ash and debris²⁰ from the Loma Caldera volcano rained down on the town from less than a third of a mile away. Sheets believes the eruption hit at roughly 7 p.m. on an August evening because of the mature corn stalks（玉米秆） preserved in ash casts, the fact that the farming implements²¹ had been brought inside, the sleeping mats had not yet been rolled out, meals had been served but the dishes were not yet washed, and corn was set into pots to soak in water overnight.