OLD MYSTERY SOLVED

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1933, Page 7

OLD MYSTERY SOLVED

“BOX AND COX” ARMIES. TUNNELS UNDER A MOUNTAIN. American archaeologists have long been exploring the ruins and ancient monuments of the civilisations in Mexico before the Spaniards came. Among the people who lived in the south of Mexico 500 years ago were the Mixtecs and the Zapotecs, who absorbed much of the older Mayan civilisation of which so much evidence has been found in Guatemala to the south.

Maya words and symbols are found in Zapotec manuscripts, and the Nahua race, to which both Mixtecs and Zapotecs belonged, probably settled in a district held by the Mayas. The Mixtecs and the Zapotecs were frequently in conflict, each trying to drive the other from the Oaxaca district, where, round Monte Alban, the Zapotecs had established themselves. 4 One of the strange features in the conflict was the way the Zapotec forces disappeared suddenly, to reappear in a different place next day, to the great discomfiture of the enemy. They were miracle armies to be able to vanish when hard pressed and turn up next day at the rear of the attackers, and, of course, the Zapotecs made the most of the legend that arose about it. Now the secret is out. The American investigators of Monte Alban have discovered the mountain and its neighbourhood to be honeycombed with tunnels through which armies could be marched from one place to another. Each entrance was carefully concealed, and for the first few yards the tunnels are very narrow.

The tunnels are great feats of engineering, and many finds are expected from them, for eventually the Mixtecs captured Monte Alban and used the tunnels as catacombs for their own dead. In one of these tunnels great treasures of gold and precious stones have already been ' discovered.