Boiled bones show Aztecs butchered, ate invaders

[Story]

Boiled bones show Aztecs butchered, ate invaders

By Catherine BremerWed Aug 23, 4:23 PM ET

Skeletons found at an unearthed site in Mexico show 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 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 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."

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.

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.

TEETH MARKS

"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."

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 some 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.

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."

[blackjohn]

Jim Hawk(in)s and I have already decided to give up pirates and start reenacting Aztec Cannibals.

Actually, reenacting conquistadores does have some appeal to me.

[sirhenrymorgan]

Ah, Spanairds! I like mine medium rare with a glass of Chianti.

-- Sir Henry

[jim hawkins]

Say this is some good spanish food. Pass me more conquistador.

Ill have the balboa burger, vasco de gama on the side, hold the cortez.

[Story]

Cannibal's Love Song* -

I'll sing you a monster's lullaby,

I wanna tear you apart,

Just to feel you on the inside.

I can fill the void inside of you,

just tell me that,

Tell me that you want to...

If you want to be my

Dreadful, darling doll,

You've gotta learn

The cannibal's love song.

Got to make the flesh give awat inch by inch.

Come with me and

Drink in the violence.

Every bite you take

Will make them part of you.

Their smiles will never fade.

And when their bodies break,

Their spirits stay forever in your veins.

* It'd be funny if someone set these lyrics in a 17th or 18th century melody.

[Patrick Hand]

One question....

I can figure how the skelitons found could be identified by race, and how the evidence could show that the bones were scraped,.... But where do they get the information about the Aztec eating the fresh heart (or how they sacraficed them for that matter)

Interesting, but it sounds like the reporter has added a few embelishments to the find..........

[sirhenrymorgan]

I would suppose (and I'm not a forensics expert) that there would be marks on the rib bones from an incision in that area. It's not like they had rib crackers back then. But that is an interesting question. Perhaps he was one of the meals in a past life.

-- Sir Henry

[Cut-throat]

I can understand the conclusion that they ate some of the flesh by the evidence of teeth marks on the bones, but I'm with Pat on the question of them eating the heart. They could have removed the hearts for ceremonial purposes but I see nothing, yet, that says they ate the hearts.

[kass]

Say this is some good spanish food. Pass me more conquistador.

Ill have the balboa burger, vasco de gama on the side, hold the cortez.

<sigh> That's Portuguese, doll. Not Spanish.

Much less spicy...

[PirateQueen]

That's Portuguese, doll. Not Spanish. Much less spicy...

Apparently, you've never sampled the linguiça my Portugee husband loves. Its spiciness will rival a Spanish chorizo any day.

[Story]

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