subjacent

adj

Etymology: From Latin subiaceō (“lie beneath”).

1. Lying beneath or at a lower level; underlying.

   “In some places, however, quartz reefs, payably auriferous while in Silurian rock, have been followed down to subjacent granite, and have there been found to thin out and become unprofitable […]”

   “Since the times of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, however, there had always been a subjacent stream of travel literature which had queried the civilizing function of Western penetration of such societies.”