A follow-up dig to who and what may be buried in what appears to be an Aztec Emperor's tomb beneath the streets of modern Mexico City.
"Mexican archaeologists using ground-penetrating radar have detected underground chambers they believe contain the remains of Emperor Ahuizotl, 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. Ahuizotl (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 Templo Mayor pyramid.
"Archaeologists told The Associated Press that they have located what appears to be a six-foot-by-six-foot entryway into the tomb about 15 feet below ground. The passage is filled with water, rocks and mud, forcing workers to dig delicately while suspended from slings. Pumps work to keep the water level down.
" 'We are doing it very, very slowly ... because the responsibility is very great and we want to register everything,' said Leonardo Lopez Lujan, the lead government archaeologist on the project. 'It's a totally new situation for us, and we don't know exactly what it will be like down there.'
"As early as this fall, they hope to enter the inner chambers _ a damp, low-ceilinged space _ and discover the ashes of Ahuizotl, who was likely cremated on a funeral pyre in 1502. By that time, Columbus had already landed in the New World. But the Aztecs' first contact with Europeans came 17 years later, in 1519, when Hernan Cortes and his band of conquistadors marched into the Mexico Valley and took hostage Ahuizotl's successor, his nephew Montezuma.
"Because no Aztec royal tomb has ever been found, the archaeologists are literally digging into the unknown. Radar indicates the tomb has up to four chambers, and scientists think they will find a constellation of elaborate offerings to the gods on the floor.
"The tomb's curse _ water _ may also be its blessing. Lopez Lujan said the constant temperature of the pH-neutral water in the flooded chambers, together with the lack of oxygen, discourages decomposition of materials like wood and bone that have been found at other digs around the pyramid, which was all but destroyed in the Conquest.
" 'This would be quite an important find for Aztec archaeology,' said Michael Smith, an archaeologist at Arizona State University who is not connected to the dig. 'It would be tremendously important because it would be direct information about kingship, burial and the empire that is difficult to come by otherwise.' "
For more, see the Associated Press article.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road