In the Aztec temple of the god of war was found a tower of human skulls

In the depths of Mexico City, an Aztec tower of 676 human skulls was discovered. Although the Aztecs can hardly be called "shy and sweet," when it comes to war and death, this discovery enabled leading archaeologists to assume that their ancient culture was even more cruel than previously thought.

Excavations were conducted in Templo Mayor - one of the largest temples in the capital of the Aztecs Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City).

Structure of skulls

As Reuters reports, in this well-known archaeological treasure chest historians have recently discovered hundreds of skulls and thousands of fragments of bones formed into a tower. These structures, built of human skulls, known as "zompantli," and have already been documented. Nevertheless, the structure in Templo Mayor was even more terrible than others.

A great tower of skulls was found in the chapel of Huitzilopochtli, which was built in honor of the Aztec sun god, war and human sacrifice, who was also the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. Analysis of skeletal remains revealed quite shocking and unheard-of details: these bones belonged not only to soldiers.

Anthropologists expected to find only the bones of young men who supposedly could be warriors. However, it turned out that the tower also consists of the remains of women and children, and they, for understandable reasons, could not take part in hostilities. Scientists have not yet found similar evidence of the cruelty of the Aztecs.

The biggest city in America

Tenochtitlan is an Aztec city that flourished around 1325 AD. E. And before the arrival of the Spanish colonialists in 1521. Before the conquest, it was the largest and most prosperous in America.

But after the arrival of the Spaniards from the great once the city almost nothing left. We know about it not only thanks to archaeological monuments, but also written observations of Spanish soldiers who were simultaneously in horror and delighted with this "new" land.

Memories of Spanish soldiers

Andres de Tapia (a Spanish soldier who accompanied the conquistador Ernan Cortes during the conquest of Mexico in 1521) mentioned these turtles in his diaries. He described an ossuary made of the skulls of dead soldiers and men who were sacrificed.

In one of his stories, it is said that the Spaniards decided to count the skulls and found that there were at least 136,000 of them. Now we know that the Aztecs killed not only men who took part in hostilities, but also women and children.

Excavations, which began in 2015, are still going on, and archaeologists constantly come across fascinating finds. Only last month on this site they found an area containing the ancient Aztec temple, a playground and a potential zone for sacrifices.