[Aztek]

SKELETONS found at an unearthed site in Mexico show Aztecs captured, ritually sacrificed and partially ate several hundred people travelling with invading Spanish forces in 1520.

Skulls and bones from the Tecuaque archaeological site near Mexico City show about 550 victims had their hearts ripped out by Aztec priests in ritual offerings, and were dismembered or had their bones boiled or scraped clean, experts say.

The findings support accounts of Aztecs capturing and killing a caravan of Spanish conquistadors and local men, women and children travelling with them in revenge for the murder of Cacamatzin, king of the Aztec empire's No. 2 city of Texcoco.

Experts say the discovery proves some Aztecs did resist the conquistadors, led by the explorer Hernan Cortes, before the Spaniards attacked the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City.

History books say many indigenous Mexicans welcomed the white-skinned horsemen in the belief they were returning gods but turned against the Spaniards once they tried to take over the Aztec seat of power in a conflict that ended in 1521.

"This is the first place that has so much evidence there was resistance to the conquest," said the archaeologist Enrique Martinez, director of the dig at Calpulalpan in Tlaxcala State, near Texcoco.

The caravan was apparently captured because it was made up mostly of the mulatto, mestizo, Maya Indian and Caribbean men and women given to the Spanish as carriers and cooks when they landed in Mexico in 1519, and so was moving slowly.

The prisoners were kept in cages for months while Aztec priests selected a few each day at dawn, held them down on a sacrificial slab, cut out their hearts and offered them up to Aztec gods.

Some may have been given hallucinogenic mushrooms or fermented cactus juice to numb them to what was about to happen.

"It was a continuous sacrifice over six months. While the prisoners were listening to their companions being sacrificed, the next ones were being selected," Mr Martinez said.

The priests and town elders sometimes ate their victims' raw, bloody hearts or cooked flesh from their arms and legs once it dropped off the boiling bones.

Knife cuts and even teeth marks on the bones show which ones had meat stripped off to be eaten, Mr Martinez said.

Aztec warriors whitened the bones with lime and carried them as amulets. Some were used as ornaments in homes.

On hearing of the massacre, Cortes renamed the town Tecuaque - meaning "where people were eaten" in the indigenous Nahuatl language - and sent an army to wipe out its people.






Aye, atleast they were twisted before they got mutilated and cannibalized.....lol