If you happened to be a hot-shot first-stringer in a competition on the stone-walled ball courts of ancient Tehuacalco, Mexico, not far from Acapulco, you wanted to make certain you blew a lot of plays.
You sure didn’t want to win.
In recognition of their strength and valor, winners were immediately sacrificed on the field, on the theory that the gods would be most pleased by the blood of the best players. The biggest ball-playing stars might even have had their legs removed and fed to the crowd, as a means of sharing their vigor throughout the tribe.
Definitely a lot to be said for being a loser!
Visiting Tehuacalco and discover an ancient civilization
This is just one of the many fascinating – if more than slightly blood-curdling – stories you’ll hear when you visit the recently discovered Volpe Indian settlement at Tehuacalco. Well worth the short drive from the beaches and bright lights of nearby Acapulco, Tehuacalco offers an in-progress look at an archaeological dig that is revealing a fascinating civilization. Take a morning away from sunbathing at the beach and add enormously to your understanding of Mexico’s rich history.
Discovered as the result of road-work done on a new highway, Tehuacalco is still in the daily process of excavation, but a visitors’ center and well-informed guides are there to provide a complete overview of the work being done and the discoveries being made. Resist the urge to be independent and sign up for a guided tour. If you simply wander around on your own, you’ll never fully appreciate what you’re seeing – and you’ll miss a whole lot of great stories.
Understanding the Volpe Indians
For example, without the guide’s commentary, who would ever guess that the ceramic fragments on display in the visitor’s center were once funeral urns – and that the dead were thought to have either been cremated or simply dismembered so that they could fit into the womb-shaped containers, ready for resurrection at some future time? Now that’s a detail you wouldn’t want to miss.
Perhaps the most fascinating of the elements excavated so far are Tehuacalco’s temple and sacrificial altar. Used by the inhabitants of the settlement for all religious ceremonies, these areas include quirky details that speak volumes about the importance of the Volpe Indians’ beliefs.
Respect for the gods was central. Evidence to support this is found in the shape of the steps leading to the top of the temple. Too narrow for any human foot, the steps forced worshippers to climb the stairs sideways, preventing them from ever turning their backs on the nearby altar.
Again, without a guide, who would ever have guessed that?
Tehuacalco was registered as an archaeological site in 1996 but excavations didn’t begin until 2006. Experts believe that the twenty acre central site is now 80 percent exposed, but there’s much more work to be done. While restoration and rebuilding is a large part of the project, the workers carefully insert small stones in walls to indicate where the original structures end and the recreated ones begin.
Although in high season, as many as 1,000 visitors tour the site, the area is large enough to avoid crowding and there remains a sense of discovering something relatively new in the archaeological world – something your sunbathing buddies back at the resort won’t have seen!
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Liz Fleming is an award-winning Canadian travel journalist who specializes in adventure, health and wellness and learning travel. For more from Liz, go to: Liz Fleming’s Travel Tales.