Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to William Ramsey Investigates. On tonight's show, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite history books. It was called The Conquest of New Spain, and it was written by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, also just basically known as Bernal Diaz. The reason this book came to mind was because of a recent article that was brought to my

attention.

It was published in July, July 1st, 2017.

The title was Tower of Human Schools Found in Mexico City Dig, cast light on Aztec sacrifices.

Archaeologists find more than 650 skulls near the site of Templumayor.

It was in the center of present-day Mexico City.

But back at the time of the Mexican conquest or the conquest of the Aztec Empire,

it was known by a different name.

I think it was Tanuketla, some old Mexican name.

But just to read a little bit of the article.

A tower of human schools unearthed beneath the heart of Mexico City has raised new questions

about the culture of sacrifice in the Aztec Empire after crania of women and children

surfaced among the hundreds of hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.

Archaeologists have found more than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments in the forbidding structure. Archaeologists have found more than 650 skulls caked in lime

and thousands of fragments in the cylindrical edifice

near the site of the Templo Mayor,

one of the main temples in the Aztec capital,

Tenoctitlan, which later became Mexico City.

The towers believed to form part of the Hue-Sompantli,

a massive array of skulls that struck fear into Spanish conquistadors when they captured the city under Ernan Cortez. The structure was mentioned in contemporary accounts.

Historians relate how the severed heads of captured warriors adorned Sompantli or skull racks found in a number of Mesoamerican

cultures before the Spanish conquest. But the archaeological dig in the bowels of old Mexico

...