An ancient Aztec temple has been discovered inside a normal colonial building in Mexico.

Archaeologists believe it dated from 1486 to 1502AC, when Emperor Ahuizotl ruled during what is called the Auge era of the Aztec empire.

Archaeologist Raul Barrera said the temple was clearly one of the most important buildings of the ancient Aztec capital, because it was dedicated to the wind god Ehécatl-Quetzalcóatl.

He said: “This god’s function was to create wind. He had the power to produce wind and, at the same time, open paths so that the gods, in his case Tlaloc and his helpers the Tlaloques, would produce rain. And the building we’ve been able to identify is the posterior part of the temple Ehecatl.”

The temple is located inside a colonial-era building in the heart of the Mexican capital and was discovered when the owner applied to remodel it. In Mexico, archaeologists inspect the construction of all buildings in the historic districts before issuing remodeling permits.

[Full story] [Discuss here]

Newsweek has an interesting article about Göbekli Tepe, a temple complex in Turkey that predates the pyramids is rewriting human history.

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for “potbelly hill”—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a “Rome of the Ice Age,” as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island.

Though not as large as Stonehenge—the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high—the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt’s German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.

A thousand year old temple complex has been found in northwestern Peru, near the city of Chiclayo.

The discovery of the complex, excavated near the city of Chiclayo between 2006 and late 2009, has injected a dose of reality into the legend of Naylamp, the god who supposedly founded the pre-Inca Lambayeque civilization in the eighth century A.D., following the collapse of the Moche civilization.

That’s because evidence at the Chotuna-Chornancap archaeological site indicates the temple complex may have belonged to people claiming to have descended from Naylamp—suggesting for the first time that these supposed descendants existed in the flesh.

The sophisticated Lambayeque culture, also known as the Sicán, were best known as skilled irrigation engineers until being conquered in A.D. 1375 by the Chimú, a civilization also based along Peru’s arid northern coast.

Archaeologists have been “trying to decode the legend’s mystery” for a century, said dig leader Carlos Wester La Torre, director of the Brüning National Archaeological Museum in Lambayeque. “The goal was to understand the possible relations between the oral legend and archaeological evidence.”

[Full story]

Some kids on a school trip in Indonesia may have found a legendary temple called Ngablak.

The panels were discovered by local secondary school students on a field trip as they crossed the Opak River in Ngablak, Sleman, about one kilometer from the Sewu and Prambanan temple complexes.

Sewu is an 8th-century Buddhist temple, and the second-largest Buddhist temple in Central Java after Borobudur. It is located less than a kilometer north of Prambanan, a ninth-century Hindu temple.

Paryono, the school’s principal, said the students were drawn to inspect the unusual rocks. “They were everywhere along the river and embankment,” Paryono said.

He said that while some of the stones were carved, others looked like ordinary rocks.

“Some had carvings like the stones on a temple,” Paryono said, adding that the school had immediately reported the discovery to the preservation agency.

[Full story] [Photo source]

The remains of Queen Berenike’s cat goddess temple has been found in Alexandria, Egypt.

Dr. Zahi Hawass said the remains discovered are 60 meters by 15 meters, and extend under Ismail Fahmy street. About 600 Ptolemaic statues – amongst which are beautiful depictions of the cat goddess Bastet – were also unearthed.

Dr. Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, Head of Antiquities of Lower Egypt, said that the mission excavating at Kom el Dikka on property of the Alexandria Security Forces included 18 skilled excavators and restorers. The large collection of Bastet statues indicates that the temple was dedicated to her.

The Bastet statues were unearthed in three different areas of the site, alongside other limestone statues of unidentified women and children. Clay pots and bronze and faience statues of different ancient Egyptian deities have also been uncovered, as have terracotta statues of the gods Harpocrates and Ptah.

Early studies on site revealed that the temple’s foundation can be dated to the reign of Queen Berenike – the wife of King Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-222 BC) – making this the first Ptolemaic temple discovered in Alexandria to be dedicated to Bastet. It also indicates that her worship continued in Egypt after the decline of the ancient Egyptian era.

[Full story]