Elite graves found in Mexico City

A structure believed to be an 800-year-old Aztec pyramid has been discovered in central Mexico City and could drastically revise the early history of the ancient empire, officials announced. The structure was found inside a larger pyramid known as the Grand Temple at the site of the Aztec city of Tlatelolco.

If the age of the edifice is confirmed, the discovery could push back the age of Tlatelolco—as well as that of its nearby "twin city" Tenochtitlán—by a century or more, said Salvador Guilliem of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. Guilliem, who is leading an archaeological effort to study Tlatelolco, said the structure's construction suggests it could have been built as early as A.D. 1100 or 1200, at least a century earlier than historical accounts suggest the city was founded. While Guilliem's team continues to work on determining the new pyramid's age, the researchers have already uncovered new insights into the Grand Temple.

"Until now we thought Tlatelolco's Grand Temple had seven phases of construction," Guilliem told National Geographic News. "Now we know that there are eight." The team also used ground-penetrating radar to locate a series of other structures near the Grand Temple containing human remains and grave offerings. "We dug 2 meters [6.5 feet] and found an offering of green stones and five skulls," Guilliem said. The remains—belonging to four adults and a child—appear to have been positioned with heads turned toward the north and bodies to the south, he added. "We will explore more next season, but we think this building corresponds to the military elite," he said. Modern interpretations of Aztec legends say Tlatelolco was built around A.D. 1358, the same year as Tenochtitlán, although archaeological evidence has cast doubt on that date in recent years, experts say.

"If true, the date of this pyramid fits with many other archaeological finds that reveal evidence of Aztec occupation earlier than the traditional dates," said Susan Gillespie, a University of Florida anthropologist. The find could also shed light on the poorly understood early relationship between Tlatelolco—a massive market province—and Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital and one of Mesoamerica's largest cities. "The nature of Tlatelolco and Tenochtitlán's entwined origins and histories remains one of the underexplored mysteries of the Aztec era," Gillespie said. The new discovery could challenge the notion that Tenochtitlán was the dominant twin during the early, entangled development of the two Aztec provinces, said Michael Smith, an Aztec expert at Arizona State University.

"There are vague traces in the historical sources that Tlatelolco may have been more powerful than Tenochtitlán in its early decades," he said. "If there was indeed a large pyramid in Tlatelolco in the Early Aztec period, given that no such find exists in Tenochtitlán, it may suggest that Tlatelolco was indeed the dominant city in their early years. That would be significant."

What's Inside the Pyramid?

Guilliem and his colleagues believe that an offering to Tezcatlipoca Black, the Aztec god of commerce, will be found inside the newly discovered pyramid. Guilliem theorizes that workers intentionally broke into the smaller pyramid in 1368 while building a subsequent phase. "When they broke it, it is very probable that they deposited a deity that's likely to be Tezcatlipoca," he said. "They most likely deposited an offering to the deity [Tezcatlipoca Black], conducted a ceremony, [and] then closed it again." The team also wants to determine if the Grand Temple at Tenochtitlán has a similar stage of construction—a key to untangling the early power balance between the two city-states, Guilliem said Gillespie, the University of Florida anthropologist, said such a comparison could yield crucial clues to the dynamics of the ancient Aztec cities. "The great temple at Tenochtitlán similarly had many cached offerings as part of the different building phases," Gillespie said. "It will be interesting to see how the Tlatelolcan corpus of offerings compares to that of Tenochtitlán."

Advertisment: Try out our sponsor offer

Thank God and Andy that these secrets will soon enaugh give you success in sports betting.

Do you want to know how to you can make £1,000... £3,250... even £5,000 every week betting on sports on the Internet -- even if you have...

• No betting experience
• No knowledge of sports or scoring systems
• Zero technical or computer skills
• Very little money to invest up front

Well let me tell you, it's easier than you may think... IF you know the right strategies!
Just CLICK HERE now for these secrets! This is 100% legit and it will bring you 100% satisfaction!

NOTE: This information is intended only for residents of the UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, France, and other European countries.

Alaskas sea drlling will harm animals

Environmental groups are condemning a government plan to open sea floor off the northwest coast of Alaska to petroleum leases, saying the decision was based on incomplete information and seriously threatens already burdened arctic species.

The U.S. Minerals Management Agency planned the sale in the Chukchi Sea without taking into account changes in the Arctic brought on by global warming, and the agency proposed insufficient protections for polar bears, walrus, whales, and other species that could be harmed by drilling rigs or spills, according to the groups. The lease sale in an area nearly 46,000 square miles (120,000 square kilometers) big—slightly smaller than the state of Pennsylvania—was planned without information as basic as the polar bear and walrus populations, said Pamela A. Miller, Arctic coordinator with Northern Alaska Environmental Center.

The lease sale is among the largest acreage offered in the Alaska region.

"The Minerals Management Service is required to have preleasing baseline data sufficient to determine the post-leasing impacts of the oil and gas activities that will occur," Miller said. "They simply do not have that." The MMS announced it would hold a lease sale on February 6 in Anchorage for the ocean floor on the outer continental shelf of the Chukchi Sea, the body of water that begins north of the Bering Strait and stretches between northwest Alaska and the northern coast of the Russian Far East. The MMS is a branch of the Interior Department. Among its stated aims is the management of ocean energy and mineral resources on the outer continental shelf.

The Hypersonic Age is Near

Recent breakthroughs in scramjet engines could mean two-hour flights from New York to Tokyo. They could also mean missiles capable of striking any continent in a moment's notice. No wonder the race to develop them is as fierce as ever.

Last March, engineers from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) gathered in the control room of a high-temperature tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. After a countdown, a jet of blue flame fueled by methane gas roared down the 12-foot length of the tunnel. A low rumble crept into the control room. It sounded like a rocket firing, which actually wasn't far from the truth.

"Okay to inject," a test director announced when the flame had reached full force. An angular pedestal covered in bolted copper plates rose from the floor of the chamber, placing an experimental scramjet engine called the X-1 into the inferno. "AOA modulating," called the test director as the engine tilted slightly. "Model on centerline." Then, "We are in ignition." And with that, an exhaust flame even hotter than the 2,000°F-plus methane jet around it began to dance behind the activated engine, growing brighter as it ramped up to full thrust. After one minute, the engine shut down and descended through the floor.

The test was part of the X-51A Flight Test Program, a research project funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon's research arm. The X-51A project is, in turn, one piece of a global effort—part collaboration, part race—to build jet-powered aircraft that fly as fast as rocket ships. And the technology that will make this breakthrough possible is the scramjet, an engine that inhales air at tremendous speeds, squeezes the air until it's thousands of degrees hot, and then mixes that air with fuel to generate massive thrust at higher speeds than any other jet-engine design.

The X-1 scramjet engine, which will eventually power the X-51A aircraft, is the most advanced scramjet engine ever built. The blowtorch blasting through the chamber was meant to simulate the extreme heat generated by flying faster than Mach 6. In all, the team at Langley would repeat this test 44 times. "We tested it at Mach 4.6, 5.0 and 6.5," says Curtis Berger, the X-51A program manager at PWR. "The amount of time that this thing was actually running and creating thrust was just about 17.8 minutes." He pauses to let that sink in. "Over 17 minutes of time on this engine. That's a lot of time for a scramjet engine."

To put things in context, the world's fastest jet, the Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, set a speed record of Mach 3.3 in 1990 when it flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in just over an hour. That's about the limit for jet engines; the fastest fighter planes barely crack Mach 1.6. Scramjets, on the other hand, can theoretically fly as fast as Mach 15—nearly 10,000 mph.

This could mean two-hour flights from New York to Sydney. It could also mean missiles capable of hitting targets on another continent at a moment's notice, and when you put it that way, it's not surprising that militaries around the world—the U.S., Australia, China and perhaps others—are trying to build them. After decades on the drawing board, it seems scramjet technology is finally about to arrive.

Squirrels use ''snake perfume'' to fool predators

To mask their odor from rattlesnakes, California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew on sloughed-off snake skin and smear it on their fur, according to a new study.

The act most likely persuades the predators that another snake, not a squirrel, is in the area.

"To our knowledge this is the first case where has been tested systematically and shown to have an anti-predator function—protecting the squirrel from rattlesnake predation," said study lead author Barbara Clucas. Clucas, a graduate student in animal behavior at the University of California, Davis, said she first noted this behavior in 2002. She saw rock squirrels at Caballo Lake State Park in New Mexico licking themselves to apply chewed snake skin to their flanks, tails, and rear ends, which gave them the pungent, musky scent of a rattlesnake. In 2003 she saw California ground squirrels at Lake Solano County Park in California doing the same thing. Her team's study of the squirrels appeared in the November issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.