Mexico City or D.F. - El templo mayor, El palacio nacional, the Anthropology Museum, Chapultapec Park

I started the day off eating some of the delicious whole wheat bread I bought the other day. Then as a group we met up by the cathedral.

The cathedral is right next to the ruins of a pyramid. Coincidence? No, not at all.

These ruins are part of the "Museo del templo mayor" or the Great Temple.

This is a model showing the seven layer of the Great Temple.

Layers 1 and 2

Layers 3 and 4

Layers 5 and 6

Layer 7: beneath layer 6 Mexico is always sinking

What it would have looked like on top. This is where they killed possibly 200 people a day. The Aztecs ruled over a multi-million population. 

The stone of the moon goddess. She is suppose to be evil. The sun is good and anyone opposing the sun is evil.

A pyramid stone turned into a cathedral stone. When the Spanish arrived. They were probably overwhelmed. What they saw were giant pyramids all over Mexico where hundreds of people even children and babies were sacrificed every day. They probably thought these people are barbarians. After all, who could do such a thing? But, after seeing the commerce, organization, and unique farming practices they took the stance that it was ignorance. Ignorance like a child who is violent, and needs to be controlled, restrained, and maybe taught basic skills because they don't understand the harm they are doing.

One of the ways the Spaniards took control over the Aztecs was by destroying their temples and using the temple stones to build cathedrals. The cathedrals were often built on top of the site of an old temple. This is case for cathedral in the Zocalo in D.F. and of a cathedral in Cuernavaca. The cathedral in the Zocalo is sinking unevenly into the ground because it is built on top of ruins which were not completely settled. Mexico is always sinking and the floors and walls of the cathedral are warping and slanting due to the uneven weight distribution. The great temple ruins first dug up in the 1920s are just beside the cathedral. 

Our guide was a really funny and gave us the tour in English as Miquela doesn't speak Spanish. His best line was when he was showing us how big the lake around Mexico City used to be on a map. Then he asked us:

Do you know what happened to the lake? We drank it...well, except me. I only drink beer.

:) 

The next part is the museum stuff that I like.

Left: Mold of some sacrificed skulls.

Right: Part of the temple if you look on the right you will see a line of red doughnut's carved in the wall it is a common pattern in decorations of the Aztec be it temples, carvings, or clothing.

Left: gifts were often left at the temple buried for the Gods. What is interesting is that the presentation of the gift was as important as the gift- as seen in this cement box used to present an offering. Another fun fact is that shells, corral, and water like figurines were often used in conjunction with the dead. Kind of like underwater= underworld.

Right: Clothing stamps. one of the ways the aztecs decorated their clothing was through these elaborate stamps

After the museum, we went to the National Palace. It is like the white house, and if I understood right, is used by the executive branch of the government. Cortes originally started building it for himself as a sort of Spanish palace in Mexico.

The famous muralist Diego Riveras painted the History of Mexico. One element of his paintings is that he uses a bright blue and turquoise paint when depicting the Native people of Mexico.

Me, Chelsi, Alena, Marissa 

The group: Chris, Dr. Turley, Matt, Niel, Alena, Chelsi, Marissa, Hannah, Me, Natali, 

+ Miquela (an awesome person who is visiting Mexico with her dad Landis our security/tour guide)

We then went to the Anthropology Museum. I love it. I would have loved to have spent a couple more hours there. Here are some pictures

Aztec sun stone/calendar

 Some of the clothes they wore. I would use this as a belt. I was told they used cotton, but I am not sure of what other textiles were used.

A cool spider plate

I love the colors that they use in the murals.

codice= their books. Almost all of them were burned by the Spaniards.

Jewelry inspiration

The Olmecs are the mother people.

Street art- angel wings between two busy roads.

As we left the museum we passed through Chapultapec Park. This is the green lake I wanted to go canoeing on. 

Here we are in front of the monument dedicated to Los ninos innocentes. Each pillar represent one of the child martyrs that died defending Chapultepec Castle from the US. The youngest was 13 during the Mexican–American War. The statue is of a women (Mexico) with her arm around two children one dead and one alive. It is titled "A los defensores de la patria" (to the defendors of the country). I like how both the dead and the living are recognized in the portrayal of the statue.