Ancient sacrifice victims were brought far to city
For centuries, human captives were brought hundreds of miles to be sacrificed at a pyramid in the oldest city in North America, just north of modern Mexico City, an archeologist says.
DNA tests on more than 50 skeletons from the Pyramid of the Moon at the Teotihuacan ruins reveal they were from faraway Mayan, Pacific or Atlantic coastal cultures.
The victims, many of them beheaded, were killed at different times from AD 50 to AD 500, to dedicate new stages of pyramid construction. They were probably captured in war or obtained through some kind of diplomacy, archeologist Ruben Cabrera said Wednesday. He led the excavation of the smaller of two main pyramids at Teotihuacan, which housed some 200,000 people at its height of power, around AD 500.
“Teotihuacan may have had a tradition of capturing prisoners for sacrifice,” Cabrera said.
Researchers are not sure how the Teotihuacan victims were sacrificed, nor do they know much about Teotihuacan’s inhabitants or their language.
Aztecs and other ancient civilizations in what is now Mexico cut out the hearts of sacrifice victims.
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