https://archive.is/1pXzb
NYT: What Lies Beneath the Vatican of the Zapotecs?
The Church of San Pablo, built by the Spanish in 1590 directly on top of the ruins of Mitla.
The ruins of Mitla sit about 30 miles from Oaxaca in the mountains of southern Mexico, built on a high valley floor as a gateway between the world of the living and the dead. The site was established in roughly 200 A.D. as a fortified village, and then as a burial ground by the Zapotecs, the so-called Cloud People, who settled in the region around 1,500 B.C.
2200 years old
In 1674, Francisco de Burgoa, a Dominican friar, wrote an account, based largely on church documents, of Spanish missionaries who had explored a sprawling labyrinth of tunnels and burial chambers beneath the ruins of a monumental palace. A century earlier, secular clergy had blocked the doorways to the sunken complex with bricks and mortar, presumably either to keep the masses out or the ghosts in.
Hard by the courtyards was the Church of San Pablo, a Catholic house of worship. The church was built in 1590, seven decades after Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Oaxaca Valley. Members of the Dominican order assembled it atop the sacred ruins, repurposing stones from the palace. By severing the Zapotecs from their pagan deities, the missionaries hoped to convert them to Christianity. “Instead of trying to kill off the Zapotec’s religious beliefs,” Dr. Argote said, “it was easier just to wash their brains with new beliefs.”
"Instead of trying to kill off the Zapotec’s religious beliefs, it was easier just to wash their brains with new beliefs" - quite probably true!
@Jd755 here is some info - nothing about it is difficult to accept so far.. but then neither can it be known. I would expect that there really are tunnels under this structure. But then - as I look at the people involved, I become very suspicious about what is being presented. We have already read that: "secular clergy had blocked the doorways to the sunken complex with bricks and mortar".
The researchers were denied permission to set up equipment inside the church, so they had placed seismic sensors — electrodes and geophones — in a horseshoe arrangement on the patio, to peer down through layers of soil. By early afternoon a tangle of cables covered the yard like mangrove roots.
Last year the researchers used a combination of three scanning technologies — ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistivity tomography and seismic noise tomography — to generate three-dimensional images of what lay below. The surveys revealed a mysterious underworld, confirming the presence of a large void under the sacristy that extended to the west and northwest.
fair enough they don't want to disturb this or that... But this does mean we just have their say so on whatever-it-is - we cannot verify anything. A site that the church has had controlled access to since 1590.
Is this evidence?
Tall and angular, Mr. Vigato talks about the Zapotec culture with the boyish enthusiasm of an Eagle Scout describing his merit badges. He grew up comfortably in Milan and traveled widely with his parents. He attended Harvard Business School, during which time he met Daniela Thions Meyer, a native of Mexico who was getting her M.B.A. at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. They married and eventually moved to Mexico City, where he became a Walmart executive for a while. His fortune comes largely from his family, and from his work in retail and as a strategy consultant.
In his spare time he wrote “The Empires of Atlantis,” an alternative history of the origins of civilization in which he proposed that “Atlantis, not Africa, was the true cradle of mankind.” The theory elicits a chuckle from Dr. Argote, the National Institute researcher. “I will only believe in lost civilizations when I see material remains of them,” she said. “In the Mitla project, we are only using scientific methodologies whose applicability and success have been proven in previous research and supported by peer-reviewed scientific publications.”
Marco Vigato, right, the research team’s sponsor, with Ludovic Celle, left, an illustrator, and Mr. Ruiz, the caretaker, in a room of Zapotec stone mosaics.
So Marco Vigato sponsors the project. Who is he?
Marco M. Vigato is an Italian born author, researcher and explorer who
has dedicated the last 15 years of his life to the task of uncovering the truth about the origins of civilization. Educated at
Harvard and Milan's Bocconi University, he lives in Mexico City.
He is the
author of The Empires of Atlantis, published by Inner Traditions, and has appeared on numerous documentaries, podcasts and TV shows as an expert in ancient Mesoamerica and the worldwide megalithic phenomenon.
In 2020, he founded the ARX Project (
www.arxproject.org) with the objective of
uncovering more evidence of what he believes was once an advanced global seafaring culture that vanished at the end of the last Ice Age.
from
Marco M. Vigato: books, biography, latest update
Seems like a rich guy with a version of history he likes. A conspiracy history evangelist - with a focus on Mesoamerica. And he can get articles in the NYT.
And then take a look at his team, lolol:
Marco M. Vigato | Founder
Born in Italy and living in Mexico City, Marco has studied at Harvard and Milan’s Bocconi University. He has been researching ancient civilizations as an independent researcher for the past 15 years. He is an expert on ancient Mesoamerica, as well as a regular contributor to the Ancient Origins online magazine and to various other print and on-line journals and podcasts. He is also the author of books and publications on various subjects of history and prehistory related to the origins of civilization.
online magazine and to various other print and on-line journals and podcasts, author
Ludovic Celle | Co-Founder
Born in France and living in Oaxaca, Ludovic holds a degree in architecture from the Grenoble School of Architecture. He has been an illustrator specialized in architecture for 12 years, since 2017 with a focus on Precolumbian visualization and iconographic investigation. His detailed 3D reconstruction of the postclassic Zapotec city of Mitla has won him praise in the archaeological field. His central investigation is the wide world of stepped-fret designs throughout the American continent.
illustrator, degree in architecture (not history)
Aleksander Tokarz | Co-Founder
Born in Poland and living in Mexico City, Aleksander attended California College of the Arts in San Francisco where he graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture. He spent several years working in Denmark with Bjarke Ingels Group, Henning Larsen Architects, and 3XN Architects. Afterwards he received a Master of Arts in Architecture from the Arkitektskolen Aarhus in Denmark. With his own design studio he has built many projects in Mexico including participation in the reconstruction efforts after the September 19, 2017 earthquake.
another architect, has built projects in Mexico
Alejandro Saavedra | Director of Digital & Museography
Born in the indigenous community of San Gregorio Atlapulco, Xochimilco, in Mexico City, Alejandro holds an Economics degree and is currently studying for a second degree in Architecture from the Universidad del Valle de México. He has been a participant in various seminars, diplomas, certifications related to the protection and conservation of cultural heritage, and continuing education programs from the following institutions: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia; Harvard University, RWTH Aachen, Germany; Universitá di Napoli Federico II, Italy, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile; Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía INAH, Mexico; in addition to developing projects related to the documentation and registration of cultural heritage in Mexico.
studying to be an architect
(from:
The Team | Arx Project)
Would you expect architects to feature so heavily in a historical mission? At this point I want to link to my first thread here, about David Rumsey and his map collection:
Meta history - Who provides the data?
Remember all those maps that being uncovered, flat earth british with all those photos, etc? Its great entertainment... but as to whether the maps, the underground scans, the architecture are anything to do with the truth, is a totally different question.
Back to the article
But the church committee, an elected body largely independent from church hierarchy and the diocese of Oaxaca, has repeatedly turned down requests to conduct more research around that portion of the site. Its opposition appears to be motivated by a fear that the church would be razed to allow for archaeological digs, and that any riches found would be requisitioned.
“All these concerns are unfounded,” Dr. Argote said. “By federal law, no one can demolish an historical monument to recover pre-Hispanic remains. And any so-called treasures would mostly consist of ceramics, human remains or lithic artifacts, not gold or jewels as the locals believe.”
Neither the church nor the law seem to be helpful to any of this research.
There's then an account of 33 year old Omar Santiago who went into the tunnels as a boy:
Lacking a flashlight, they navigated the narrow stairway, slowly, carefully, holding onto the decorative friezes that studded the stone walls. At the bottom of the stairs, they panicked. “I felt I was trespassing where the living should not be,” Mr. Santiago said. He and his brother scrambled up the steps and didn’t look back. Eight years later the entrance was capped with a concrete slab, and, for good measure, sheathed in floor tile.
When a spooky-looking woman offered the man a tamale, he turned around and fled. “The man later described the woman to his wife,” Mr. Santiago said. “His wife was shocked: The woman had died many years before.”
There was the slightest of pauses.
“My mother said, ‘Remember, Omar: Never accept tamales from dead people.’”
Spooky ghost story from Omar. Good thing the entrance was concreted over etc.
But where does that table come from? In fact, where does the whole narrative come from? Does "alewife" even mean what we think? If drinking ale was more common than water - why was anyone fined at all? Etc.
