Archaeologists have unearthed a cruel story: they ate the captives and then received terrible revenge

But the Spanish took brutal revenge: soldiers attacked the city and killed hundreds of residents in one day. The attack was led by Gonzalo de Sandoval, and the order was given by the leader of the conquerors, Hernán Cortés. The victims of the Zultépec attack were mainly women and children, say researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico (INAH).

Many women and children have died hiding in their homes or trying to escape the carnage, an INAH spokesman said. The archaeologists’ findings reflect more than three decades of work on the site of the former Zultépec stand, and at the same time reveal new information about the acts of violence perpetrated by both parties.

At that time, the inhabitants of Zultépeco were acutely. It is a Mesoamerican ethnic group closely related to the Aztec culture. The captives of the caravan were made up of European men, women and children, peoples of the Maya, Tlaxita and Totakak peoples who were allies of Spain, and Cubans: both indigenous and African, according to Mexico News Daily. Researchers say that after the caravan was kidnapped, the Achauli people sacrificed people to the god Xiuhtecuhtli according to their ritual calendar.

But during the months that the caravan’s travelers were held captive, they drastically modified their buildings to accommodate foreigners – they introduced walls and a European-style oven, according to the report.

However, these comforts were short-lived and the last prisoners were sacrificed in January or February 1521. Around this time, the hill near Zultépeco became known to the locals as Tecoaque. In the Nahuatl language it means “where they ate.” This is what makes investigators believe the prisoners were eaten.

Archaeological finds suggest that the inhabitants of Zultépeco probably knew that the Spanish would soon take revenge. For example, residents tried to protect their city by building walls that blocked the way to residential areas. Apocalypse also appears to have tried to hide the bodies of slain prisoners: Scientists inspected 22 tanks in the city and found trophized human bones along with personal items from caravans, sculptures of Mesoamerican deities, and remains of caravan animals.

Mr. de Sandoval and his men attacked the city in March of that year, according to a report by Enrique Martínez Vargas, director of excavations. Archaeologists have found dozens of female skeletons on a stretch of road roughly 120 meters long, most likely dead in an attempt to protect 10 children between the ages of five and six, according to EM Vargas. According to him, the position of the skeletons “suggests that people were fleeing” and it was then that they were killed and buried in an ambulance that they fell.

The women and children who tried to hide inside were “brutally mutilated, as evidenced by the broken bones found on the floor of the rooms,” Vargas said in a statement. The conquerors also burned the temples of Zultépec and cut off the heads of the sculptures of the gods of Akal. The brutality of the attack was both a revenge for the slain prisoners and a warning of what awaits opponents of the Spanish occupation and conquest, says EM Vargas.