Stories tagged Toltec

Not a pretty site

by mdr on Apr. 21st, 2007
in Human Organism

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The ancient rain god Tlaloc: The Toltecs and Aztecs appear to have sacrificed children to him in hopes he would send them rain.Construction workers north of Mexico City have uncovered the one thousand year-old remains of two dozen children, the apparent victims of sacrifice to an ancient rain god.

Archeological estimations have dated the bones from 950 AD to 1150 AD, a time during the reign of the Toltec, a civilization that preceded the Aztec. The 24 skeletons were found in a single grave, laid out in the same east-facing position, with a figurine of the rain god Tlaloc. They appear to have been decapitated in a ritualistic way.

“You can see evidence of incisions which make us think they possibly used sharp-edged instruments to decapitate them”, said Luis Gamboa, an archaeologist with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History .

"To try and explain why there are 24 bodies grouped in the same place, well, the only way is to think that there was a human sacrifice," he said.

The Toltec were a war-like civilization that dominated a region ranging from the Southwestern United States to the Gulf of Mexico and into Central America until about the late 12th century. They are known for sacrificing adult humans, usually prisoners captured from other parts of Mexico. But this seems to be the first evidence in the Toltec culture of the sacrifice of children.

The grisly site was discovered in the Toltec’s ancient capital Tula, about 80 kilometers north of present day Mexico City.

LINKS and Further Info
MSNBC story
Sci-Tech Today story
Yahoo News story
Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian culutures