- MEXICO CITY (Reuters)
- The discovery of a tomb filled with decapitated bodies suggests Mexico's
2,000 year-old "Pyramid of the Moon" may have been the site of
horrifically gory sacrifices, archeologists said on Thursday.
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- The tomb at Teotihuacan, the first major city built in
the Americas, whose origins are one of history's great mysteries, also
held the bound carcasses of eagles, dogs and other animals.
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- "It is hard to believe that the ritual consisted
of clean, symbolic performances -- it is most likely that the ceremony
created a horrible scene of bloodshed with sacrificed people and animals,"
said Saburo Sugiyama, one of the scientists leading the ongoing dig.
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- "Whether the victims and animals were killed at
the site or a nearby place, this foundation ritual must have been one of
the most terrifying acts recorded archeologically in Mesoamerica."
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- Of the 12 human bodies found, 10 were decapitated and
then tossed, rather than arranged, on one side of the burial site. The
two other bodies were richly ornamented with beads and a necklace made
of imitation human jaws.
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- The Aztecs came across Teotihuacan's towering stone pyramids
in about 1500 A.D., centuries after the city was torched and abandoned.
It is not known what language its inhabitants spoke, but the Aztecs named
it "The Place Where Men Become Gods," believing it was a divine
site.
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- A major tourist site, it lies about 35 miles northeast
of Mexico City.
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- After 200 years of excavations, archeologists are still
largely in the dark about the origins of the city, which is believed to
have housed 200,000 people at its peak in 500 A.D. -- rivaling Shakespeare's
London, but a millennium earlier.
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- Sugiyama said the nearly complete excavation indicates
the Pyramid of the Moon was significant to its builders as a site for celebrating
state power through ceremony and sacrifice.
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- The sacrifices were carried out during the expansion
of one of the city's major monuments, suggesting the government wanted
to symbolize growing sacred political power.
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- "Contrary to some past interpretation, militarism
was apparently central to the city's culture," the excavation team
said in a statement.
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- The master-planned city-state collapsed around 700 A.D.,
an event as mysterious as its formation.
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- It was the site of a modern-day controversy earlier this
year when protesters fought and lost a battle to keep the Mexican unit
of retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. from building a new store a half-mile
away.
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- http://news.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6982679
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