Sometimes, years of painstaking excavation work are required to uncover the artifacts of the previous – and typically, as with a recent earthquake in Mexico City, a lot of the exhausting digging work is completed by nature.
The 7.6-magnitude earthquake occurred on 19 September 2022, close to Mexico’s west coast, killing two, and the rumbling was felt in Mexico City, round 400 kilometers (250 miles) away. The shocks broken a number of buildings, together with a regulation college close to town heart.
It was from beneath this building’s foundations that archaeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) recovered an enormous stone snake head carving, relationship again greater than 500 years to the time of the Aztecs.
Measuring 1.8 meters (5.9 ft) lengthy, 1 meter (3.3 ft) excessive, and 85 centimeters (33.5 inches) huge, the snake head is estimated to weigh round 1.2 metric tons (roughly 2,645 kilos). It’s most likely greater – and quite a bit heavier – than the sofa in your lounge.
It’s an astonishing discover, which was fastidiously faraway from the unique web site through crane. When found, the stone snake head was roughly 4.5 meters (14.8 ft) deep inside the historic Tenochtitlan web site. It was clear that one thing particular had been revealed.
With assist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Templo Mayor Museum in Mexico, consultants are persevering with to work to look at and protect the discover – which has 80 % of its authentic colourful floor intact.
The colours crimson, blue, black, white, and ocher are seen on the stone carving, and researchers have now placed it inside a humidity chamber in an effort to protect the hues as a lot as potential. Made from mineral and plant supplies, they’re notably fragile.
Color preservation work will proceed into 2024, and the staff in cost hopes that the moisture that the snake’s head has constructed up throughout the centuries will slowly be launched – at a tempo that does not harm the end of the stone.
The head is assumed thus far again to a time in direction of the top of the Aztec Empire, when the Tenochtitlan metropolis state would have been thriving in the identical space. The Aztecs used loads of serpents of their paintings, not least due to snake-like deities corresponding to Quetzalcoatl.
Of course, the sturdiness of stone carvings and etchings means these works give us a useful window into the previous. They can final for hundreds of years, for much longer than something written down or painted on parchment or paper.
As for the Aztecs, new digs and discoveries are frequently giving us new insights into how they lived and thought. Their dominance swiftly ended because of a mixture of things, together with invading forces and the unfold of illness.
