Image: ReutersAn extensive cache of Aztec ritual offerings found underneath downtown, off the steps of what would have been the empire’s holiest shrine, provides new insight into pre-Hispanic religious rites and political propaganda.
Archeologists believe Aztec priests carefully layered these offerings in the box within the elevated platform for a ceremony likely attended by thousands of rapt spectators amid the thunderclap of drums. In the same box, archeologists previously found a sacrificed jaguar dressed like a warrior associated with the Aztec patron Huitzilopochtli, the war and Sun God, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a more than two-year pause on excavations.