The Borneo Post (Sabah)

Tower of human skulls in Mexico casts new light on Aztecs

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MEXICO CITY: A tower of human skulls unearthed beneath the heart of Mexico City has raised new questions about the culture of sacrifice in the Aztec Empire after crania of women and children surfaced among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.

Archaeolog­ists have found more than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments in the cylindrica­l edifice near the site of the Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in the Aztec capital Tenochtitl­an, which later became Mexico City.

The tower is believed to form part of the Huey Tzompantli, a massive array of skulls that struck fear into the Spanish conquistad­ores when they captured the city under Hernan Cortes, and mentioned the structure in contempora­ry accounts. Historians relate how the severed heads of captured warriors adorned tzompantli, or skull racks, found in a number of Mesoameric­an cultures before the Spanish conquest.

But the archaeolog­ical dig in the bowels of old Mexico City that began in 2015 suggests that picture was not complete.

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

“Something is happening that we have no record of, and this is really new, a first in the Huey Tzompantli,” he added.

Raul Barrera, one of the archaeolog­ists working at the site alongside the huge Metropolit­an Cathedral built over the Templo Mayor, said the skulls would have been set in the tower after they had stood on public display on the tzompantli.

Roughly six metres in diameter, the tower stood on the corner of the chapel of Huitzilopo­chtli, Aztec god of the sun, war and human sacrifice. Its base has yet to be unearthed.

There was no doubt that the tower was one of the skull edifices mentioned by Andres de Tapia, a Spanish soldier who accompanie­d Cortes in the 1521 conquest of Mexico, Barrera said.

In his account of the campaign, de Tapia said he counted tens of thousands of skulls at what became known as the Huey Tzompantli. Barrera said 676 skulls had so far been found, and that the number would rise as excavation­s went on. The Aztecs and other Mesoameric­an peoples performed ritualisti­c human sacrifices as offerings to the sun.

 ?? — Reuters photo ?? Ingrid Trejo, an archaeolog­ist from the National Institute of Anthropolo­gy and History, works at a site where more than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments were found in the cylindrica­l edifice near Templo Mayor, one of the main temples...
— Reuters photo Ingrid Trejo, an archaeolog­ist from the National Institute of Anthropolo­gy and History, works at a site where more than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments were found in the cylindrica­l edifice near Templo Mayor, one of the main temples...

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