Stunning eagle sculpture uncovered at sacred Aztec temple in Mexico
Stunning eagle sculpture uncovered at sacred Aztec temple in Mexico
By Harry Baker - Staff Writer 6 hours ago
It is around 600 years old.
The bas-relief of a golden eagle found near the foot of Templo Mayor.
(Image: © Mirsa Islas)
A striking 600-year-old Aztec sculpture depicting a golden eagle has been uncovered in an ancient temple in Mexico, archaeologists with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced Monday (Jan. 25).
The eagle, which measures 41.7 inches by 27.6 inches (106 by 70 centimeters), is the largest bas-relief sculpture ever found at the temple.
The eagle was carved into the floor of a structure at the foot of Templo Mayor — the iconic pyramid-shaped temple that was built at the heart of the ancient Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlán and is now in modern-day Mexico City.
Artists created the bas-relief — a type of sculpture with raised images carved out of a stone background — in the mid-15th century during the reign of Moctezuma I.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/aztec-eagle-sculpture-uncovered.html?utm_source=notification
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The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan
The archaeological rescue of the Templo Mayor de Tenochtitlan in Mexico revealed a lot of information about the culture of the Aztecs.
https://www.lavanguardia.com/historiayvida/edad-moderna/20190324/47309892142/el-templo-mayor-de-tenochtitlan.html#foto-4
Also posted in Anthropology:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/12296619
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In four days, the Aztecs murdered ('scarified') 80K at Tenochtitlan -butchered 20K people a day - over four days 1487.
That 'civilization' deserved to decimated, re-decimated, and, cremated.
We Learned About the Aztecs From Their Conquerors—But New Research Is Letting Them Speak for Themselves
A stone Aztec calendar of the sun, on display at a museum circa 1930 Ewing Galloway—Getty Images
BY CAMILLA TOWNSEND NOVEMBER 1, 2019 1:00 PM EDT
With the U.S.-Mexico border a focal point of division in today’s American politics, it has become commonplace for one group of Americans to hurl insults at Mexicans and clamor for the building of a wall to keep them out, while another group insists on Mexicans’ goodness relative to others and reminds Americans that they have made invaluable contributions to the country.
Amid all this, it is easy to forget that migrations between today’s United States and Mexico once went in the reverse direction, that what is now Mexico City was once the Aztec capital — and that it was, without a doubt, the beating heart of North America.
Corn farmers had lived in central Mexico longer than anywhere else and, as a result, had developed a great civilization, complete with marketplaces, schools and running water. People as far north as today’s Utah had heard all about their marvelous and wealthy land, and whenever warfare or drought brought suffering, hundreds and even thousands of people would make their way south, hoping for a better life.
The city that emerged on a lake in the central valley of Mexico was called Tenochtitlan (Ten-och-TEE-tlan) and its people were called the Mexica (Me-SHEE-ka). Today we call them the Aztecs, and they have a fearsome reputation in our minds. The Spaniards, whose conquest of the Aztecs began 500 years ago this year, in 1519, told us most of what we think we know about them. Apparently motivated by guilt about what they had destroyed, the Europeans painted a bleak picture of Aztec life before the Christians arrived. (Remorse can be seen in a famous account written by the foot soldier Bernal Diaz de Castillo: “Of that beautiful place, nothing is now left standing.”). Since the 1970s, archaeologists, in uncovering their most dramatic site, twin temple pyramids, produced a horrifying record of skulls and serrated flint-knives. Taken together, these artifacts and accounts suggested that the Mexica were a barbaric and violent people.
But defining the Aztecs based purely on their European conquerors’ judgments and the look of a few silent objects leads to an incomplete picture at best. Until we have heard people speak for themselves—explain their actions and motivations; disclose their fears and insecurities; and express love, humor and wit—we don’t really know them.
. . .
For too long, we have accepted as fact the records left behind by the Spaniards, whose language, culture and worldview vastly differed from the people they conquered. Five hundred years ago Hernando Cortés arrived in Mexico, and all these centuries later we still don’t really know the Aztecs—or their descendants—at all. There is a rich and multifaceted Aztec history that we’ve been missing all along. Luckily for us, the Mexica people had the forethought to write down their stories, to record their voices for posterity. It’s time we started listening.
More:
https://time.com/5715476/aztec-history-myths/
November 10, 20199:00 AM ET
JAMES FREDRICK
Twice this year, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has publicly asked the Spanish crown to apologize for atrocities against native people.
. . .
"After they arrived here on Nov. 8, it's likely that the first place the Aztecs brought the Spanish was here to the Great Temple," says Carlos Javier González González, former director of the Great Temple project. "Symbolically, the Great Temple was the center of the universe to the Aztecs. It was the point from which the world turned."
NPR joined González and Raúl Barrera Rodríguez, director of the urban archaeology program at Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, for a tour around the Great Temple's remains.
For centuries, Spanish testimony portrayed the Aztecs and other Indigenous groups in the Americas as uncivilized, savage barbarians. But continued excavation of the Great Temple and Tenochtitlán has helped change that perception.
"Tenochtitlán was a huge city," says Barrera. "It had public institutions, a whole system of government, public servants, schools, public services — it was a totally organized city."
After the fall of Tenochtitlán, the Spanish built their city directly on top of it. Barrera's urban archaeology program, which has first rights to excavation at any buildings under construction or renovation in Mexico City's historical center, aims to reveal this underground city.
"It's like a puzzle we're trying to put together," he says.
. . .
For centuries, Spanish testimony portrayed the Aztecs and other Indigenous groups in the Americas as uncivilized, savage barbarians. But continued excavation of the Great Temple and Tenochtitlán has helped change that perception.
"Tenochtitlán was a huge city," says Barrera. "It had public institutions, a whole system of government, public servants, schools, public services — it was a totally organized city."
After the fall of Tenochtitlán, the Spanish built their city directly on top of it. Barrera's urban archaeology program, which has first rights to excavation at any buildings under construction or renovation in Mexico City's historical center, aims to reveal this underground city.
"It's like a puzzle we're trying to put together," he says.
. . .
"Misunderstanding and misrepresentation of something like Aztec civilization today can make it easier for us to misunderstand and misrepresent Indigenous peoples of the Americas," he says.
More:
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/10/777220132/500-years-later-the-spanish-conquest-of-mexico-is-still-being-debated
