The skulls were carved out of pure rock crystal, and the golden mask was covered with human skin. There was most of all gold - the treasure pulled 100 kilograms. On January 9, 1932, Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso excavated a tomb in the ancient city of Monte Alban.
The treasures lay in the tomb for at least 800 years. They were taken out for a whole week. The most precious of the 500 items was a gold necklace: 854 links were arranged in 20 rows. Surprisingly, they never tried to plunder the tomb, it was not even found by the chief "cleaner" for the gold of the Indians - the conquistador Fernando Cortez.
Take everything with you
The ruins of Monte Alban did not attract attention for a long time - they hid on a wooded mountain. The travelers walked along the slopes, stumbled upon stones with hieroglyphs and strange mounds. This remained until, in 1931, the archaeologist Kaso climbed the mountain to "dig": he discovered the ruins of a large settlement.
It was the capital of one of the oldest states in the history of Mexico. It was founded by the Zapotecs, an Indian people about whom less is known than the Aztecs or Mayans. About 500 BC. Zapotecs fortified on Mount Alban, fenced it with a stone wall - 3 km long and 9 m high - and in this convenient position they existed for more than one century. They even created their own Zapotec civilization. They had a main deity, to whom children were sacrificed: Kosiho-Pitao ("Great rain god"). They believed that their ancestors came out of the caves and therefore after life they should go not to the ground, but to the cave. Their tombs were caves: four stone walls, covered with a stone cover. From the inside, the walls were painted with frescoes, jewelry was piled under the ceiling on the road to the deceased.
Promotional video:
Closer to the body
Today Monte Alban acts as an archaeological reserve. More than one and a half hundred tombs have been discovered on its territory. The most famous is Tomb No. 7, in which Alfonso Caso found a rich treasure almost 90 years ago. “For Mexican archeology, the golden treasures of Monte Alban are not a treasure, they are grave goods,” says Dmitry Belyaev, associate professor at the Mesoamerican Center of the Russian State Humanitarian University:
In value and even luxury, the Caso find is comparable to the discovery of the "gold of Troy" or the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Dmitry Belyaev believes. Including because it asks riddles that should be solved. For example, why did the Zapotecs put an empty ceramic urn while loading the burial to the eyeballs? Either so that the spirit of the ancestor of a deceased person could enter into it and tell him how it is and what they have in the afterlife. Either for the soul of the deceased to be in this vessel - closer to the body. There is no answer yet.
Author: Olga Bugrova