Posted on 04/25/2015 12:33:02 PM PDT by Beowulf9
MessageToEagle.com - A Mexican archeologist hunting for a royal tomb in a deep, dark tunnel beneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid has made a discovery that may have brought him a step closer: liquid mercury,' according to Reuters' report.
In the bowels of Teotihuacan, a mysterious ancient city that was once the largest in the Americas, Sergio Gomez this month found "large quantities" of the silvery metal in a chamber at the end of a sacred tunnel sealed for nearly 1,800 years.
"It's something that completely surprised us," Gomez said at the entrance to the tunnel below Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent, about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Mexico City.
(Excerpt) Read more at messagetoeagle.com ...
They also are spacing out the excavations to keep the site a top tourist attraction for as long as possible. They have a timetable for openng that site that stretches over centuries. At least that is what they told us when I was there in 1983.
I love that story. But the payoff on so many different levels is how much did he charge?
Alens
We used to play with the mercury that we recovered after a thermometer broke when I was a child. There were little balls of mercury on my mom's desk for years, and she lived to 101. My dad (a chem teacher) always had a small vial of mercury on hand that we could examine. This mercury was in the liquid silver form -- not the powdered form which I found stored on a shelf in our manufacturing plant. A couple of pounds of the powdered mercury cost me a couple of hundred dollars to surrender to the county Haz Mat folks.
It seems to me they wouldn’t need to milk it like that to keep it a top tourist attraction. Not that that kind of thinking from the Chinese surprises me. To my mind it would always be fascinating. It’s not like they’re making any more extensive ancient emperor’s tombs. lol
His famous last words were, “now, don’t touch anything.”
He couldn't get away with that here.
Several BigGov agencies would shut him down.
You are right, I think the Toltec civilization ended around AD 800, so a lot older. The Aztecs had come in around 200-300 years before Spanish. I visited Teotehuacan some 55 years ago. Went alone on a bus so not tied to a tour group timetable. Climbed the Pyramid of the Moon, I seem to recall still undergoing some degree of restoration. Looked out over the countryside with the Pyramid of the Sun, the bigger one to my left. Saw a causeway leading off into the distance straight ahead and a large structure near the left a half or one mile down that causeway. There were many small unrestored mounds on either side of the causeway leading away from the Moon Pyramid. I suspect they have since been excavated and rebuilt. I walked down the causeway until I came to the large structure. It was an elevated platform, very long and wide, actually more impressive in volume than either pyramid. Then I walk to the right across stony uneven ground. Got very thirsty and spotted “tuna” fruit on nopal cactus. Cut some open, they were ripe and juicy and tasted very good. What a great memory. Hiked back to the bus station. It was a very large city.
Decided to see if memory served. It does, this link in addition to having a lot of archeological info, also has a recent map of restored area. Layout just as I remember, except the bus came in at the Museum behind the Pryamid of the Sun. The large plateau was the foundation for the Temple of Coatzcoatl and much larger in area and probably in volume of the major pyramids.
http://www.philipcoppens.com/orionimage.html
I would have said something earlier but she never gave me the chance. You never know who you'll meet at the top of a pyramid.
I love that story. But the payoff on so many different levels is how much did he charge?
People in poor countries have to work so hard just to get by. The kid (or someone) had to hump something like ten cases of bottled Coke up those pyramids. The steps are very uneven and very steep. In one section on the temple of the sun the steps are maybe a foot and a half high and only four or five inches wide.
Yeah, and they say ‘open the window to ventilate’ and ‘vacuum’ to remove the hazard.
Riiiiiight. /s
Well, who knows what the Chinese really mean? I’m just repeating what our guide told us. But, she also told us that the emperor who built the tomb was the kindest and most compassionate emperor and that he had the map of the empire and the terracotta soldiers crafted so that he didn’t have to bury his real soldiers.
Now, we find out that that was nothing but bunk. He was a tyrant who buried all the people who worked on the tomb, including those who buried him. There are huge mass graves associated with those tombs.
So, whatever makes the tourists happy is what they will say. If you ever get the opportunity to go to China, however, do not miss Xian.
I’m doomed... one of those bulbs broke right in my face as I was putting it in a fixture. Being on a ladder there was nowhere to go to avoid the vapor.
That would have been a good time to tell her you were there for a re-enactment of a ritual and would she like to be part of the ceremony. :)
No one knows what they mean, they’re inscrutable! lol
Not likely to happen but if I do I’ll put Xian on the itinerary. Thanks!
She and her friend were pretty nice looking ladies and I so
wished I wasn’t there with Mom, Dad and Sis at that moment.
I would have loved to go out for some modern Mexico City
night clubbing rituals with them. ;-)
——pre-Aztec pyramid——
Hmmm....... is it not an Aztec pyramid?
A bunch of hooey over nothing. I was just a bunch of Mayan kids turning pennies into dimes.
I think it was also the site of the decisive “battle” during Cortez’ desperate flight from Tenochtitlan to Vera Cruz.
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