BRIEF RESEARCH MODEL

During the early 1970's, a model for this study was drafted. It hasn't changed much since.

Research Model:

Map of Cuauhtinchan No. II and caves for ritual use. This set of data is considered hypothetical until the caves are opened and inspected.

Subject:

Ceremonial caves.

Location:

Mesoamerica, more particularly Central Mexico.

Culture:

The society was not nomadic; they did not dwell in tents or crude shelters; nor was their economy based on hunting/gathering. These people organized a centralized government, formed a priestly class, erected monumental architecture, managed intensive agriculture, learned science, mathematics, astronomy, a calendar system, and kept written records.

Burials:

This culture had sacred underground sanctuaries. A center for annual rites, a repository for precious relics. Burial grounds in the legendary hills of Quetzalcoatl. These sites were symbolic of national patrimony and legality. The surrounding lands became a place of their inheritance.

Conquest:

The people were considered savages. Their codices, genealogies, other writings burned. Anything of religious significance was destroyed. All portable wealth, gold, silver, art treasures, were plundered by the Spaniards and shipped to Europe. The Conquest made waste of Mexico, and especially to all things on the surface of the land. However, this study is about what was below the surface of the land -underground in secret caverns that were modified by man. PreColumbian antiquities protected within funerary temples now sealed off. Such places are spoken of in codices and chronicles. But historians and anthropologists have largely ignored this information, primarily because one cannot study what one cannot find. Which is to say: out of sight, out of mind.