[Aztlan] Is there an Aztec Lupercal?

[Bertrand Lobjois]

It reminds me that cave near the Xochicalco's Acropolis. I don't remember
the exact date (maybe solstices) but the sun go through an hole in the
ground and project a powerful ray of light inside the cave.

Bertrand Lobjois

2007/11/21, Diehl, Richard <rdiehl en as.ua.edu>:
>
> Hola Listeros,
>
> Italian archaeologists made international news with yesterday's
> announcement that they located the Roman Lupercal. This artificial cave,
> decorated with lavish mosaics and an image of the Roman imperial eagle, was
> commissioned by Augustus Caesar, Rome's first official emperor, as part of
> his palace. This sanctuary, constructed some 700-800 years after the
> mythical events surrounding Rome's founding, represents the cave where the
> she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, the mythical founder-twins of Rome.
> Apparently Augustus fostered the belief that he was a descendent of the
> twins and was "re-founding" the city in some great cycle of time.  We can
> never know whether Augustus and his contemporaries really accepted the R and
> R story as myth or history but the Lupercal certainly suggests they
> appreciated its value as a validating origin story (see Mary Beard's
> November 20 blog in the on-line London Times for the opinion of an expert).
>
> Now, just what does this have to do with Mesoamerica and the Aztecs? Well
> no, I am not suggesting that sea-faring Romans crossed the Atlantic and
> planted alien ideas in the head of clue-less Indians on the coast of
> Veracruz. However Mesoamericans had their own well-developed beliefs about
> the importance of caves in their history and religion. This leads me to
> ponder the possibility that certain Aztec emperors created artificial caves
> as replicas of their equally mythical Chicomostóc, birth-cave of their
> ancestors, as places of worship. Perhaps not, but if they did, the
> archaeologist in me naturally asks where they might be. In the Tenochtitlán
> palace complexes? At Teotihuacan? At Tula, where legend has it that the most
> sacred of Aztec relics were buried immediately after the Spanish sacking of
> Tenochtitlan? In some secluded natural cave on an inaccessible mountain top
> overlooking the Basin of Mexico?
>
> We may never know but probing re-readings of the 16th century Native and
> Spanish accounts, along with some good old foot archaeology, might shed some
> light on the topic. Any thoughts?
>
> Saludos,
> Dick Diehl
>
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-- 
Es un pedazo del alma que se arranca sin piedad.