[ppi] [ppiindia] Archaeologists find remains that back up tale of ritual massacre

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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14485960/?GT1=8404

Grisly Aztec saga reconstructed
Archaeologists find remains that back up tale of ritual massacre
       
      Tomas Bravo / Reuters A skull, apparently from an Spanish male, is 
displayed in a workshop from the Tecuaque archaeological site in Calpulalpan, 
near Mexico City.
       View related photos 
     


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By Catherine Bremer
 
Updated: 4:53 p.m. ET Aug. 23, 2006
CALPULALPAN, Mexico - Skeletons found at an unearthed site in Mexico show that 
Aztecs captured, ritually sacrificed and partially ate several hundred people 
traveling with invading Spanish forces in 1520.

Skulls and bones from the Tecuaque archaeological site near Mexico City show 
that about 550 victims had their hearts ripped out by Aztec priests in ritual 
offerings, and were dismembered or had their bones boiled or scraped clean, 
experts say.

The findings support accounts of Aztecs capturing and killing a caravan of 
Spanish conquistadors and local men, women and children traveling with them in 
revenge for the murder of Cacamatzin, king of the Aztec empire's No. 2 city of 
Texcoco.

Experts say the discovery proves that some Aztecs did resist the conquistadors, 
led by explorer Hernan Cortes, before the Spaniards attacked the Aztec capital, 
Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City.

History books say many indigenous Mexicans welcomed the white-skinned horsemen 
in the belief they were returning gods, but turned against the Spaniards once 
they tried to take over the Aztec seat of power in a conflict that ended in 
1521.

"This is the first place that has so much evidence there was resistance to the 
conquest," said archaeologist Enrique Martinez, director of the dig at 
Calpulalpan in Tlaxcala state, near Texcoco. "It shows it wasn't all 
submission. There was a fight."

Kept in cages
The caravan was apparently captured because it was made up mostly of the 
mulatto, mestizo, Maya Indian and Caribbean men and women given to the Spanish 
as carriers and cooks when they landed in Mexico in 1519, and so was moving 
slowly.

     
      Tomas Bravo / Reuters
      A view of the Tecuaque archaeological site in Calpulalpan.
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The prisoners were kept in cages for months while Aztec priests selected a few 
each day at dawn, held them down on a sacrificial slab, cut out their hearts 
and offered them up to various Aztec gods.

Some may have been given hallucinogenic mushrooms or pulque - an alcoholic 
milky drink made from fermented cactus juice - to numb them to what was about 
to happen.

"It was a continuous sacrifice over six months. While the prisoners were 
listening to their companions being sacrificed, the next ones were being 
selected," Martinez said, standing in his lab amid boxes of bones, some of 
young children.

"You can only imagine what it was like for the last ones, who were left six 
months before being chosen, their anguish."

Meat stripped off
The priests and town elders, who performed the rituals on the steps of temples 
cut off by a perimeter wall, sometimes ate their victims' raw and bloody hearts 
or cooked flesh from their arms and legs once it dropped off the boiling bones. 
Knife cuts and even teeth marks on the bones show which ones had meat stripped 
off to be eaten, Martinez said.

Aztec warriors whitened the bones with lime and carried them as amulets. Some 
were used as ornaments in homes.

In Aztec times, the site was called Zultepec, a town of white-stucco temples 
and homes where 5,000 people grew maize and beans and produced pulque to sell 
to traders. Priests had to be brought in for the ritual killings because human 
sacrifices had never taken place there, Martinez said.

Unwittingly preserved
On hearing of the massacre, Cortes renamed the town Tecuaque - meaning "where 
people were eaten" in the indigenous Nahuatl language - and sent an army to 
wipe out its people.

When they heard the Spanish were coming, the Zultepec Aztecs threw their 
victims' possessions down wells, unwittingly preserving buttons and jewelry for 
the archaeologists.

The team began work in 1990 and is only now finishing its investigation. It 
found remains of domestic animals brought from Spain, like goats and pigs.

"They hid all the evidence," said Martinez. "Thanks to that act, we have been 
allowed to discover a chapter we were unaware of in the conquest of Mexico."


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