Scientists work out theories for an Aztec tower of skulls

The 400 Spanish conquistadors who walked into the Aztec capital in the 16th century had conquest and New-World riches on their minds, but they were initially welcomed as friends. From that peaceful vantage point, they were amazed by the splendor of the people of Tenochtitlan — and their cannibalistic customs.

They found temples soaked with blood and human hearts being burned in ceramic braziers, according to the Archaeological Institute of America.

They had heard tales of thousands sacrificed at the Great Temple’s dedication, four rows of people that stretched for miles, all waiting to have their hearts torn out.

The conquistadors and the Spaniards who followed them wrote of the victims of human sacrifices rolling down the steps of the temple, where they were dismembered, then eaten in a stew with chilies and tomatoes.

But one thing terrified the European newcomers more than almost anything: A rack of human skulls that towered over one corner of the temple to Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of the sun, war and human sacrifice

Nearly 500 years later, scientists digging in Mexico City have unearthed the skulls.

They have also turned up more questions about the nature of Aztec human sacrifice that conflict with the conquistadors’ thinking.

Their biggest finding: The skulls weren’t just the heads of male warriors who had been defeated by the Aztecs. Some were the smaller, thinner skulls of women and children.

“We were expecting just men, obviously young men, as warriors would be,” Rodrigo Bolanos, a biological anthropologist investigating the find, told the news agency Reuters, “and the thing about the women and children is that you’d think they wouldn’t be going to war.”

It’s clear the Aztecs had publicly displayed the skulls of women and children, but who were they?

Defeated people from neighboring civilizations? Aztecs who had been sacrificed?

And why did the Aztecs display them in one of their holiest places?

Researchers believe the tower of skulls was definitively a show of power by the Aztecs. But a more detailed explanation has eluded researchers and may have died with the Aztecs.

The skulls were found in the cylindrical edifice near Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in Tenochtitlan. Bolanos and other researchers from the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History have been researching the skull rack since it was discovered in 2015. The excavation unearthed nearly 700 skulls.

But the dig is ongoing, and researchers expect to find more as they get closer to the base of the tower of skulls.