Search for ancient Teotihuacan king's tomb takes mercurial twist

A six-year search for a royal tomb may have finally paid off for an archaeologist excavating a tunnel deep underneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid in Mexico. At the end of the tunnel, he discovered a shimmering pool of liquid mercury.

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Pyramid of the Feather Serpent in the ancient Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan.

    

Mexican archaeologist Sergio Gomez announced on Friday he had discovered "large quantities" ofliquid mercury below the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, the third largest of the pyramids in Teotihuacan, an ancient city in central Mexico.

Gomez has spent the last six years excavating the tunnel, a slow and arduous process. It was only unsealed in 2003, after being buried for 1,800 years. Six months ago, Digital Journal reported that Gomez and his team announced they had found three chambers at the 300-foot end of the tunnel, 60-feet underground.

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Tunnel that may lead to a royal tombs discovered underneath the Quetzalcoatl temple in the ancient city of Teotihuacan.

    

At the time of the discovery of the three chambers, hundreds of artifacts, some quite unusual were found, including jaguar remains, jade statues, rubber balls, and a wooden box containing shells that appear to have hand-carved markings.

While the meaning of the pool of mercury is disputed, some archaeologists believe the shimmering metal heralds the discovery of a royal burial chamber. If this does prove to be true, it would be the first ruler's tomb ever found in the city. Gomez says this would solve the debate over leadership in the city 2,000 years ago.

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Thousands of artifacts, almost 2,000 years old, have been found.

    

The case for a city ruled by a royal dynasty

Gomez and others believe that mercury symbolized an underground river to the pre-Aztec people and was used in some of their rituals. "But it's still very uncertain, and that is what keeps everybody in suspense," another archaeologist, Geoerge Cowgill, told Reuters. Mercury has never been found in Teotihuacan, and ancient Mesoamericans really had no other use for the metal, although it has been found at three other ancient sites.

Annabeth Headreck, a professor at the University of Denver and the author of works on Teotihuacan and Mesoamerican art, agrees with Gomez. The reflective qualities of the mercury may have indeed, resembled an underground river, " not that different from the river Styx," Headrick said, "if only in the concept that it's the entrance to the supernatural world and the entrance to the underworld."

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Archaeologists digging at the end of the tunnel that may lead to a royal tomb under the city of Teotihuacan.

    

"Mirrors were considered a way to look into the supernatural world, they were a way to divine what might happen in the future," she said. "It could be a sort of river, albeit a pretty spectacular one." Headreck cited mica, which was imported, being used to coat objects used in rituals because of the shimmering effect it gave to the objects.

Rosemary Joyce, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, says that ancient Mesoamericans could produce liquid mercury by heating mercury ore, known as cinnabar. It was used for its blood-red pigment. She says the Maya used cinnabar to decorate jade objects and coat the bodies of their royalty.

But the people of Teotihuacan, for which we have no name, have not left any royalty we have been able to find. Joyce says the thousands of artifacts found in the tunnel's chambers may be an indication of a royal burial, and would lend credence to the theory that the city was ruled by a dynasty, similar to the Mayan culture.

A competing idea of how the city was governed

Linda Manzanilla is a well-respected Mexican archaeologist. She believes the tomb if that's what it is, may house the body of a lord. She contends the city was ruled by four lords, pointing out there is no royal palace depicted on any of the murals found in the ruins.

Even Headreck has a notion of the way the city may have been ruled, if not by a dynasty. Headreck suggests there may have been a number of powerful families that traded rule between them, yet never cemented their power into a dynasty. This is also something to consider, seeing there is no indication of an all-powerful ruler in any of the artifacts.

Teotihuacan, a city that still remains a mystery

Teotihuacan reached its peak around 450 AD, and probably had from 150,000 to 200,000 people living within its 11.5 square mile perimeter. The city was a powerful cultural center, and its influence is known to have extended as far south as Guatemala. It is interesting to note there have never been any military fortifications or structures ever found.

Strange though it may seem, we do not know who the people of Teotihuacan were. There has been some suggestion the people may have been from Nahua, Otomi, or Totonac ethnic groups, but it is still just a guess. The name of the city is not the name the inhabitants gave it. The name Teōtīhuacān was given to the city by the Nahuatl-speaking Aztec, several hundred years after the fall of the city. The name is a Nahuatl name meaning "place where the gods were born."