Friday

Recently, busy archeologists digging around under the Zócalo in central México City made big headlines when they discovered a large, intricately-carved monolith. If you don't know, modern México City is located right on top of the ancient Aztec capital Tenochtitlán, and several of the old city's pyramids, one inside the other like Russian dolls, poke up between the National Cathedral and the Federal Palacio. Those recent headlines were all in a tizzy that this new monolith was the largest ever discovered in the Americas. Though archeologist were wary about the definition for "largest," they admitted that it really is very big. It's longer than the previous record, a circular perpetual Mayan calendar also found in México City, but in volume it is slightly lighter; and in area, well, it's difficult to compare a rectangle to a circle, see? And really, what, if anything, does "largest" really matter when excavating anyway? Hernias, I suspect. At any rate, the real importance of this new find might just be coming into the light this week. Archeologists suspect that this monolith may be the cover to the tomb of Ahuizotl, the king who was the father of Moctezuma.* This would make the largest headlines because we have yet to locate any of the kings of the final Aztec empire, which ended, of course, when the Spanish, under Hernán Cortés, with the help of the Tarascan and Tlaxcalan peoples, destroyed that civilization while conquering México. Moctezuma himself, due to a perceived permissiveness, was probably killed by rocks thrown by his own people, so the whereabouts of his body has never been very exotic. If this new find is the grave they think it is, we about to learn more than ever about the last days of the Aztec empire just before western intervention. [Cavin]