Mexican archaeologists have found an unprecedented human burial in which the skeleton of a young woman is surrounded by piles of 1,789 human bones. Researchers have found the burial site about 15 feet below the surface in Mexico City’s Templo Mayor. The burial ground was discovered next to the remains of what many describe as a “sacred tree” at the edge of the plaza, the most sacred site of the Aztec capital.

The Aztects were not known to use mass sacrifice, or the reburial of bones as the customary ways to accompany the interment of a member of the ruling class. The National Institute of Anthropology and History calls this find “the first of its kind.”

University of Florida archaeologist Susan Gillespie, called the find, “unprecedented for the Aztec culture.” She said that when the Mayans interred sacrifice with royal burials, they were usually found as complete bodies, not as jumbles of different bone types, as is the case with this finding.

Funerary deposits for Aztec elites have only rarely been encountered. However, bodies of sacrificial victims have been found in burials of elite persons in Mesoamerica going back at least to the Preclassic period, the archaeologists say. Some of the bones showed what may be cut marks to the sternum or vertebrae, places where ritual heart extraction might leave a mark.

The researchers discovered the skulls of seven adults, and also three children in one pile. There was also long bones like femurs and ribs in another grouping. Anthropologists suggest that the bones were disinterred from previous burials, and reburied with the recent find.

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