Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said the find was made at a dig at a Popoloca Indian ruins known as Ndachjian–Tehuacán in Puebla state. The Popoloca people built the temple complex between AD1000 and AD1260 and were later conquered by the Aztecs.
Archaeologists found two skull-like stone carvings and a stone trunk depicting the god, Xipe Totec. There was also what appeared to be an extra hand dangling off one arm, suggesting the god was wearing the skin of a sacrificial victim.
In Aztec mythology and religion, Xipe Totec was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of agriculture, vegetation, the east, disease, spring, goldsmiths, silversmiths, liberation and the seasons. Priests worshipped the Flayed Lord by skinning human victims and donning their skins.
The Flayed Lord is said to have connected agriculture with warfare. He flayed himself to give food to humanity, symbolic of the way maize seeds lose their outer layer before germination and of snakes shedding their skin.
Origin of Xipe Totec
The actual origin of Xipe Totec is not exactly known, although the Flayed Lord was widely worshipped in central Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest, and was known throughout most of Mesoamerica. The deity probably became an important Aztec god as a result of the Aztec conquest of the Gulf Coast in the middle of the fifteenth century.
The worship of Xipe Totec involved an annual festival starting on the day of the spring equinox, in March, before the onset of the rainy season; it was known as Tlacaxipehualiztli – “The flaying of men.” The festival lasted 20 days, and was practiced at the time of the Spanish conquest.
Ancient accounts suggest that victims were killed either in gladiatorial-style combat or by arrows while standing on a platform. After their hearts were cut out, priests carefully removed the victim’s skins to produce a nearly whole skin which was then worn by the priests for twenty days during the fertility rituals that followed the sacrifice
This act of putting on new skin was a ceremony called ‘Neteotquiliztli’ translating to “impersonation of a god.” When the twenty-day festival was over, the flayed skins were removed and stored in special containers with tight-fitting lids designed to stop the stench of putrefaction from escaping. These containers were then stored in a chamber beneath the temple.
Compelling evidence backs up practice
The layout of the site and the discovery of the sculptures matches with the description of the ceremonies in documentary sources, which suggest that victims were killed on one altar and skinned on the other, according to CNN.
University of Florida archaeologist Susan Gillespie, who was not involved in the project, wrote that “finding the torso fragment of a human wearing the flayed skin of a sacrificial victim in situ is perhaps the most compelling evidence of the association of this practice and related deity to a particular temple, more so to me than the two sculpted skeletal crania.”
“If the Aztec sources could be relied upon, a singular temple to this deity (whatever his name in Popoloca) does not necessarily indicate that this was the place of sacrifice,” Gillespie wrote.
“The Aztec practice was to perform the sacrificial death in one or more places, but to ritually store the skins in another, after they had been worn by living humans for some days. So it could be that this is the temple where they were kept, making it all the more sacred.”
