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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAS MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2007
ARCHAEOLOGY
Discovery may be rare tomb
Underground chambers may house remains of Aztec ruler
BY MARK STEVENSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — Mexican archaeologists using ground-penetrating radar have detected underground chambers they believe contain the remains of Emperor Ahuizot, who ruled the Aztecs when Columbus landed in the New World. It would be the first tomb of an Aztec
ruler ever found.
The find could provide an extraordinary window into Aztec civilization at its apogee. Ahuizuol (ah-WEE-zoh-tuhl), an empire-builder who extended the Aztecs' reach as far as Guatemala, was the last emperor to complete his rule before the Spanish Conquest.
Accounts written by Spanish priests suggest the area was used by
the Aztecs to cremate and bury their rulers. But no tomb of an Aztec ruler has ever been found, in part because the Spanish conquerors built their own city atop the Aztec's ceremonial center, leaving behind colonial structures too historically valuable to remove for excavations.
One of those colonial buildings was so damaged in a 1985 earthquake that it had to be torn down, eventually giving experts their first chance to examine the site off Mexico City's Zocalo plaza, between the Metropolitan Cathedral and the ruins of the Temple Mayor pyramid.
ArchaeologiststoldThe Associated
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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