#ANCIENT AZTEC GLYPHS PROFESSIONAL#
#ANCIENT AZTEC GLYPHS FREE#

Samuel Barrett, an archaeologist working at Milwaukee Public Museum, was the first to conduct a series of professional excavations in 1919, 19. After years of surveying and mapping the area, Lapham presented his Aztalan results in The Antiquities of Wisconsin, a book published by the Smithsonian Institute in 1855. The first serious survey at the site was conducted by Increase Allen Lapham, a man referred to as Wisconsin's first great scientist.

#ANCIENT AZTEC GLYPHS FREE#

( Good Free Photos ) Surveys and Excavations at Aztalan State Park Mounds and landscape at Aztalan State Park. Many of the distinctive mounds that once populated the site were flattened and destroyed. The federal government then sold the land for agriculture which led to further destruction and the removal of innumerable artifacts. Next came the looters in search of Aztec gold, so much so that during the 1800s the mounds suffered extensive damage. Judge Hyer’s report generated a great deal of attention in the United States.

“The name Aztalan comes from the mistaken idea, prevalent in the early nineteenth century, that the site may have been the northern place of origin of the Aztecs of Mexico as mentioned in their legends and oral traditions,” explains Milwaukee Public Museum. The kernel of this idea was due to the apparent resemblance between the mounds found at the so-called “Aztalan” and the Aztec pyramids as described by Alexander Von Humboldt in his accounts of travelling in Mexico. The Moundbuilders: North America’s Little-known Native Architects.The Rise and Fall of Moundville: Mississippian Culture in Ancient America.A Milwaukee judge named Nathaniel Hyer then published the first written account of the archaeological remains in the Milwaukee Advertiser in 1837, in which he referred to the site as Aztalan. ( Public domain ) Setting the Record State: Why Is It Called Aztalan?īack in 1835, an early settler named Timothy Johnson discovered the site that today is known as Aztalan State Park. Illustration of Aztalan site as surveyed in 1850 by I. Nevertheless, when they were first discovered, these historic mounds caused quite a bit of confusion.

These massive architectural earthwork features were sculpted by a Native American civilization that existed in the United States in the Mississippi River Valley area. The enormous earth mounds which can be visited at Aztalan State Park in Wisconsin are remnants of an ancient culture that first settled the area around the 11th or 12th century AD.

Ancient aztec glyphs