Mexican archaeologists find dwelling for Aztec survivors of Spanish conquest

[Judi Lynn]

Mexican archaeologists find dwelling for Aztec survivors of Spanish conquest




Personajes de rasgos occidentales y con sombrero. Foto Melitón Tapia INAHJPG


MEXICO CITY.- Archeologists in Mexico said Monday they have unearthed what they believe was a dwelling where upper class Aztecs who resisted the Spanish conquest tried to preserve their customs and traditions.

The structure, where Aztecs were also buried, is part of an old neighborhood in Mexico City called Colhuacatonco, famous for being a place where the Aztecs resisted the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, the National Institute of Anthropology said in a statement.

The new find buttresses the argument that Colhuacatonco put up passive resistance after the fall of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, said Maria de la Luz Escobedo, the archeologist in charge of the project.

"It is very likely that first and second generation descendants of Tenochtitlan people quietly carried out the burials of seven people (three adults and four children aged one to eight) using the traditions of their ancestors," she was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the anthropology institute.

More:
http://artdaily.com/news/97262/Mexican-archaeologists-find-dwelling-for-Aztec-survivors-of-Spanish-conquest-#.WW2keYjyvIU

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1. Right now I am reading "1491" by Charles C. Mann about the Americas before Columbus arrived

In fact, since most of the data is taken from the first contacts between Europeans and Native Americans (or Indians) the author discusses that initial period extensively.

The portion I am currently reading gets into the controversy of how many people lived in the Americas prior to European contact. By some estimates diseases killed 90-95% of all the inhabitants which means the population had been greater than that of European. One estimate is that the die off in the Americas killed 20-25% of the human population of the world. Conservative estimates of the numbers that died are about 50% - even that "low" of a figure would disrupt life. During the Black Death in Europe about 30% died and that threw that area into the Dark Ages.

No wonder the continents seemed to be empty and that the few people the colonists saw seemed to be with little culture or technology - the entire structure of the societies of the Americas had been destroyed!