Archaeologists find temple to god of skinning sacrifices

Archaeologists find temple to god of skinning sacrifices

News:

Archaeologists found First-Known Temple of ‘Flayed Lord’ in Mexico

Facts:

• Archaeologists in Mexico have found the first temple dedicated to a deity called the ‘flayed lord’, an important god in the Aztec Empire whose worshippers were said to wear the skin of sacrificial victims.
• The Aztec practice was to perform the sacrificial death in one or more places, but to ritually store the skins in another, after they had been worn by living humans for some days. So it could be that this is the temple where they were kept, making it all the more sacred.
• Artefacts related to the god were found in the central state of Puebla, at a site built by the Popoloca people
• The temple was probably built between A.D. 1000 and 1260, the archaeologists found artefacts related to the god, Xipe Tótec including two stone skulls and a stone torso that had an extra hand hanging off its left arm.
• Scientists said the extra hand suggested the god was wearing the remains of a sacrificial victim.

About Aztec Empire

• Aztec, Nahuatl-speaking people who in the 15th and early 16th centuries ruled a large empire in what is now central and southern Mexico.
• The origin of the Aztec people is uncertain, but elements of their own tradition suggest that they were a tribe of hunters and gatherers on the northern Mexican plateau before their appearance in Mesoamerica in perhaps the 12th century
• The basis of Aztec success in creating a great state and ultimately an empire was their remarkable system of agriculture, which featured intensive cultivation
• Aztec religion practice included Human sacrifice, particularly by offering a victim’s heart to Tonatiuh (god of the sun).