(4 Aug 2007)
FILE: August 3, 2007
1. Wide of Zocalo (main square in Mexico City) with people walking near where archaeologists are working
2. Mid of people looking at archaeological site between Metropolitan Cathedral and ruins of the Templo Mayor pyramid
3. Wide of Metropolitan Cathedral
FILE: October 13, 2006
4. Mid of workers on archaeological site
5. Pan left from woman looking at site to workers at archaeological site
6. Pan right from media to cordoned-off area with hole where stone monolith was discovered (Note: directly beneath lies the site where archaeologists now believe they have found the Aztec emperor's tomb)
7. Zoom-in from of excavation to detail of Aztec figure carved in stone
8. Pan right of monolith
9. Various of details of monolith
FILE: August 3, 2007
10. Various of scale model showing former Aztec city around Zocala
11. Wide of people walking in street next to archaeological site
12. Various of archaeological site
STORYLINE:
Mexican archaeologists using ground-penetrating radar have detected underground chambers they believe contain the remains of Emperor Ahuizotl, who ruled the Aztecs when Columbus landed in the New World.
It would be the first tomb of an Aztec ruler ever found.
The find could provide an extraordinary window into Aztec civilisation at its apogee.
Ahuizotl (ah-WEE-zoh-tuhl), an empire-builder who extended the Aztecs' reach as far as Guatemala, was the last emperor to complete his rule before the Spanish Conquest.
Accounts written by Spanish priests suggest the area was used by the Aztecs to cremate and bury their rulers.
But no tomb of an Aztec ruler has ever been found, in part because the Spanish conquerors built their own city atop the Aztecs' ceremonial centre, leaving behind colonial structures too historically valuable to remove for excavations.
One of those colonial buildings was so damaged in a 1985 earthquake that it had to be torn down, eventually giving experts their first chance to examine the site of Mexico City's Zocalo plaza, between the Metropolitan Cathedral and the ruins of the Templo Mayor pyramid.
Archaeologists told The Associated Press that they have located what appears to be a six-foot-by-six-foot (1.8 metres by 1.8 metres) entryway into the tomb about 15 feet (4.5 metres) below ground.
The passage is filled with water, rocks and mud, forcing workers to dig delicately while suspended from slings.
Pumps work to keep the water level down.
As early as this autumn, they hope to enter the inner chambers - a damp, low-ceiling space - and discover the ashes of Ahuizotl, who was likely cremated on a funeral pyre in 1502.
By that time, Columbus had already landed in the New World.
But the Aztecs' first contact with Europeans came 17 years later, in 1519, when Hernan Cortes and his band of conquistadors marched into the Mexico Valley and took hostage Ahuizotl's successor, his nephew Montezuma.
Ahuizotl's son Cuauhtemoc (kwow-TAY-mock) took over from Montezuma and led the last resistance to the Spaniards in the battle for Mexico City in 1521.
He was later taken prisoner and killed.
Like Montezuma, his burial place is unknown.
Because no Aztec royal tomb has ever been found, the archaeologists are literally digging into the unknown.
Radar indicates the tomb has up to four chambers, and scientists think they will find a constellation of elaborate offerings to the gods on the floor.
The tomb's curse - water - may also be its blessing.
All signs found so far point to Ahuizotl.
The god was so fearsome that Aztecs normally buried her depictions face down in the earth.
However, this one is face-up.
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