Archaeologists unearth gruesome ‘first’ in 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 brutality.

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 victims 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

Andres de Tapia, one of Hernán Cortés’ soldiers, wrote that were so many human skulls, he had to resort to multiplication to count them all.

“We found there were 136,000 heads.”

Those skulls, the conquistadors assumed, were what remained of men who had been defeated in battle.

They were both ornamentation and message: This is what happens to Aztec enemies.

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?

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

A more detailed explanation has eluded researchers and may have died with the Aztecs.