Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Friday July 07 2017, @01:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the calaveras dept.

An ongoing excavation in the heart of Mexico City, once the great Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, has revealed a legendary tower inlaid with hundreds of skulls. This tower was first described by Europeans in the early 16th century, when a Spanish soldier named Andres de Tapia came to the city with Hernan Cortez' invading force. In his memoirs, de Tapia described an "edifice" covered in tens of thousands of skulls. Now his account is corroborated by this historic find.

According to a report from Reuters, the tower is 6 meters in diameter, and once stood at the corner of a massive temple to Huitzilopochtli, an Aztec god associated with human sacrifice, war, and the sun. It's likely the tower was part of a structure known as the Huey Tzompantli, which many of de Tapia's contemporaries also described.

Tzompantli were ceremonial wooden scaffolds used in many ancient cultures of the Americas to display the skulls of human sacrifices. Priests would prepare each skull by drilling two holes in it, then stringing it like a bead on a long cord. Once a set of skulls had been strung together, the cord would be stretched between two wooden posts, to form one row of skulls among many. The sight was designed to terrify the Aztec's enemies, and it certainly worked in the case of Spanish soldiers. Many recorded their terror upon seeing tzompantli in Tenochtitlan.

National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH [Instituto Nacional de AntropologĂ­a e Historia]) archaeologist Raul Barrera told Reuters that "the skulls would have been set in the tower after they had stood on public display on the tzompantli." It appears that the skulls were coated in lime and sunk into the wall of the tower in tidy rows.

Source: Ars Technica

Additional Coverage:
Reuters


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Friday July 07 2017, @03:13AM

    by stormwyrm (717) on Friday July 07 2017, @03:13AM (#535985) Journal
    ...when I talk about Holocaust type stuff happening in Mexico, you give me this shit about the mean nasty old Spaniards! Why? Because history has been distorted ... As the descendant of people who were expelled from Spain by the Inquisition, I have no illusions about them," Avi says, "but, at their worst, the Spaniards were a million times better than the Aztecs. I mean, it really says something about how bad the Aztecs were that, when the Spaniards showed up and raped the place, things actually got a lot better around there. — Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
    --
    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2