CALGARY -- Simple fragments of ceramics and eerie burial grounds are among the artifacts unearthed in Nicaragua by Canadian researchers who say their findings could change the long-held history of the Central American country.
For generations, Nicaraguan children have been taught that their ancestors came from central Mexico as migrants around 1000 AD, and that in 1300, a second wave made the trek. Both were believed to have brought their Aztec or Nahua culture and language with them. At least, those were the lessons passed on from the Spanish conquistadors who arrived in Nicaragua in 1529.
But Geoff McCafferty, an archeologist at the University of Calgary, said his team of researchers has recovered 400,000 artifacts from what is believed to be the country's ancient capital of Quauhcapolca, yet they haven't detected Nahua roots.
"There's a whole series of lines of evidence now that don't match the expectations of the Nahua community," Dr. McCafferty said yesterday as he unveiled some of the artifacts the Nicaraguan government allowed him to remove. "This is going to have serious repercussions, I think, when we start rewriting the history of people in Nicaragua because the group from which all the history is derived is wrong."
In terms of Canadians, he said, it would be like finding out England didn't colonize Canada.
The findings are meeting some resistance, but as the evidence mounts, the researchers say, Nicaraguan experts are warming to the idea of changing their history.
Dr. McCafferty and students and experts from Canada, Nicaragua, Mexico, Colombia and the United States have spent the past two months excavating a 700-year-old site at the ancient capital, near what is now Santa Isabel and under a banana plantation. Santa Isabel is between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Ocean.
They spent two previous seasons doing field studies there, research financed by the federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, but to date they have found little that resembles Nahua culture.
They have excavated house mounds as well as what they believe is a portion of the palace of Chief Nicaragua, leader of the indigenous people who lived at Quauhcapolca around the time the Spanish arrived, for whom the country is named, but nothing in them looks Aztec.
They expected to find long-handled pots, which the Aztecs used to burn incense to communicate with their gods, but so far have found none. They expected to find comals, broad griddles the Nahua used to cook tortillas, an Aztec staple. They turned up 100,000 pieces of pottery, but no comals. They have yet to find evidence of maize, popular with the Nahua both for food and drink. Instead, they have found carbonized cacao beans, from which chocolate is derived.
They found unusual mortuary practices involving burial urns and bodies placed on their sides, facing west, while the Nahua people were known to bury their dead seated and facing north.
The researchers have some theories about how history may have got muddled.
The people were indigenous, but the area was also multi-ethnic and included some Aztecs who travelled there for trade. When the conquistadors arrived with Aztec interpreters, Dr. McCafferty suggests, they may have spoken only with local Aztecs and in turn heard (and retold) a one-sided story.
Still, he acknowledges, more study is needed.
He presented some of the early findings a year ago to skeptical Nicaraguan peers. Now, he said, they are a little more accepting.
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