Aztec tower of human skulls uncovered

a reply to: diggindirt

Yea what a painstaking task it must be, but I'm sure as an archaeologist, this is what you live for.

Good question, where are the rest of the bodies? Imagine finding a mass grave of headless bodies.. that's pretty creepy in its own way.

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986
Yeah, these finds are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for all scholars.
When I began my career I was a ceramics geek. Then I had the opportunity to participate in a rescue operation in which I handled literally hundreds of remains. I'd had only one forensic anatomy class at that point so I relied heavily on the medical biology of my first career. I became as fascinated with burials as I had been with ceramics.
I had the great honor and pleasure of working/studying with some of Dr. Bill Bass' top students. His text is still the archaeology Bible in my eyes.
I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of keeping as much context as possible while excavating such a puzzle.

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

maybe they had an elaborate death ritual like the "tower of silence" from Zoroastrianism

where they piled the skulls of all their dead into a tower instead of burying them they simply made a tower of death

tower of silence

Seems to me like the catholic church just wanted to paint them as pagan and outright told lies about their practices to make them seem barbaric to get support from back home to OK what they were doing by systematically wiping out a race of people to meet their own needs in the new world.

If anything I am willing to say that the tower of skulls is a death ritual much like the tower of silence

originally posted by: worldstarcountry
a reply to: zosimov
I would totally produce a tower or wall of skulls in the apocalypse from those who would intrude in my domain with bad intentions!

Are you volunteering to be one of the skulls?!

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

I'm willing to be that their bodies were destroyed in a ritual , maybe they burned them into ash and then used the ash ceremoniously . I dont think the tower of skulls was a torture or a warning device, I think that its ceremonial like the tower of silence.

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

awesome find and yes, i cannot help but go to the scenes of the bloody battles and then the King or Military Commander order the army to behead all of the bodies and neatly place them in a architectural display. Im sure the skin, brains everything was still on the heads and it just withered away with time...the smell had to be attrocious which im sure just added to the fear of this tower.

They did the most disgusting thing possible to show dominance over their enemy.

originally posted by: sapien82
a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

I'm willing to be that their bodies were destroyed in a ritual , maybe they burned them into ash and then used the ash ceremoniously . I dont think the tower of skulls was a torture or a warning device, I think that its ceremonial like the tower of silence.

I dont think they would sever and display heads of their beloved, this had to be casualties of war.

a reply to: veracity

Maybe , but would other cultures leave the rotting bodies of their recently deceased families out in the open to be pecked by carrion! Yes they did in the tower of silence.

We dont deal with death like our ancient ancestors did, they were much closer to death and life than we are really

a reply to: sapien82

yeah, who knows, its so interesting.

The eastern world celebrates the date of death over birthday...today.

a reply to: veracity

I think that is where we have gone wrong as a species , we no longer venerate the dead as we did in the past , and this has a detrimental effect on us as a species
it makes us seem dishonest with ourselves , we try to distance ourself from death because of the sense of morbidity
you look at the far east compared to the west in the way we deal with death and even celebrate death.

It's quite pathetic actually

a reply to: sapien82

i agree, we should not be afraid of death, we should embrace it. Im not saying to embrace suicide...but a natural death...the other side is our real home.

Sure its sad, people die, some in horrific ways, but we will see them again and maybe even share an earth suite with them again, the soul lives forever...I sound like a christian...im not.

a reply to: veracity

it's ok most of the polytheistic cultues believe time was cyclical and not liner like the monotheistic faiths.

I think its likely that we are actually infinite ourselves , but we arent individuals we are all the same thing
we just so happen to be individuals in the 3rd dimension.

Yeh , we should totally revive the way we honour the dead

the archaic revival

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

In a sense we still can make macabre reminders of the past, the tower of skulls in Serbia is an example, one built by the ottomans but then later revered by the Serbs. Kind of like how American soldiers repurposed the Yankee Doodle song in their war of independence.

So this tower could have been built for many reasons, it could have been repurposed. Maybe it's the skulls of those who died by the hand of the conquistadors, those acquired through conquest, could even be class related as in these are the skulls of sacrificed Aztecs.

Unfortunately we'll probably never know since the conquistadors did a fine job in destroying their history, especially the written one.

Anyways, nice thread. S+F

a reply to: sapien82

There have been many interesting theories in this thread so far, and yours is just as plausible. great discussion so far.

I don't think we'll ever know the true nature of what happened. There is still a lot to dig up, maybe they will find something that will fill in some pieces to the puzzle.

a reply to: veracity

What a barbaric scene it must have been.

I was thinking about an angle that nobody has brought up yet. What if the ruler at the time was just a sadistic serial killer and was just addicted to beheading people, innocents and all, and kept the heads as trophies?

People even now have weird fetishes, and I think something like beheading could grow into some #ed up addiction.

Just a thought.

a reply to: RAY1990

Thanks for reading.

Yea, we will probably never know. History will always be altered by those that write it. Couple thousand years from now, the archaeologists of the future will probably get us wrong too.

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

ew, there were some crazy kings and rulers so I can totally see this happening...off with your head even if you looked at me wrong.

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

If we don't have a fall I'll feel sorry for any future archaeologists. Because the Internet will be our history book if it survives, I know someone studying me in 1000 years time would get a little confused reading my online history and piecing it together with physical evidence.

It's why we live in interesting times you see, we're writers of our own history, authors of our past... What could a future student of history learn with all our record keeping? It's unprecedented.

a reply to: RAY1990

Oh man, if somebody somehow got their hands on our entire internet database, would probably be the greatest discovery in history for that time period. Good luck studying that though, a historians wet dream lol.

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

i have thought about that, there has to be ways to preserve the devices. The internet will always be there...right? Just need ways to access it.

There are so many now, hopefully the access will never cease.