The bones had been on display for years in the Palacio de Cortés, in the city of Cuernavaca (Mexico), when the deadly 2017 earthquake in Puebla – which caused more than 350 deaths – substantially damaged the structure. The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) got to work restoring the facility’s former splendor, at which point a group of researchers took the opportunity to take a new look at the skeleton.
For 50 years all visitors to the center believed that they were the remains of a Spanish “man of the clergy.” The information label said the following: “Burial found in situ of a man with deformed vertebrae. Traditionally it is stated that it may be the monk Juan Leyva, who served the Marchioness Doña Juana de Zúñiga de Arellano, wife of Hernán Cortés and resident of this palace.”
The text, even so, left a small margin for doubt. “However, due to the type of posture it could be an indigenous burial.” Hence, the INAH archaeologists wanted to clear up doubts and began a detailed analysis of the remains and their surroundings.
The wear on the teeth indicates that the person was between 30 and 40 years old when they died. Despite his “deformed vertebrae,” they found no evidence of disease in the skeleton, so it is unknown how he died. From the size of his humerus, experts suggest that he was around 147 centimeters tall.
But the most surprising detail was revealed when they studied the pelvis. Its wider shape clearly showed that the remains belonged to a woman. From here, researchers point out that the body dates back to a time between 1450 and 1500 AD.
Given that the European colonizers did not arrive in the current Mexican territory until 1511, the INAH assumes “with certainty” that this “is not the body of a Spaniard.” His hypothesis is that he belonged to a pre-Hispanic group, most likely the Tlahuica people of central Mexico.
The Palacio de Cortés was built by the Spanish in the 1520s, so it appears that the structure was built around this pre-existing tomb from an earlier era. “It is more related to a pre-Hispanic burial from the contact period or earlier,” Jorge Angulo, INAH archaeologist, said in a statement.
Angulo considers that Juan Leyva’s theory did not make much sense because it was very strange “that a clergyman was buried outside his community and even more so that his burial system was not associated with the Catholic canons of the time, since it is about “a primary, direct and individual burial, with a space filled and covered by large rocks; the position was observed in lateral decubitus on the left side, with the limbs flexed towards the thoracic region.”
Hence, once the space was reopened to the public (converted into the current Regional Museum of the People of Morelos), the text that accompanies the skeleton indicates that the burial belonged to a “Tlahuica Woman.”
Experts indicate that scattered remains of two other individuals (a child and a teenager) are associated with this burial and, in addition, an adult deer bone is observed that must have served as a tool, as shown by the traces of heat treatment.
