Mexico – Archeologist have found, at the Templo Mayor Aztec in Mexico City, a massive ceremonial skull rack from the Aztec’s Empire, which appears to be the decapitated heads of enemies and warriors. According to officials, the platform known as tzompantli in the Nahualt language of the Aztecs will hopefully shed a new light on how Aztecs rulers projected power by human sacrifice.
The skull rack measures between six and eight meters (although it may have been about 34 meters long and 12 meters wide) and it appears to have worked as a platform where the Aztecs would hang decapitated heads of warriors from rival kingdoms.
The platform was dug up behind the capital´s colonial-era cathedral near Templo Mayor –the largest and most important temple of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, used for human sacrifices-, and was likely built between 1485 and 1502 to inspire fear and awe. According to the archeologist Raul Barrera the tzompantli had a very specific symbolism.
“With more study, we expect to learn that many of these skulls belong to (Aztec) enemies, who were captured, sacrificed and decapitated in order to be displayed there”, said Barrera.
The importance of this find lies on the fact that it could be used as a map to find the lost city of Tenochtitlan, razed by the Spanish in the 16th century after the Aztecs surrendered.
The Aztecs are known to be a warlike and deeply religious people who ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico before the Spanish conquest of 1519-1521.