| The process of urbanization in central Mexico began around 600 B.C. but there is evidence of human occupation thousands of years earlier, when the first bands of hunters and gatherers wandered through the Valley. At, Tepexpan, not far from present-day Mexico City, hominid remains were found by Helmut de Terra who has estimated them to be 10,000 years old. One of the most curious finds was a fossil sacrum of the Camel family unearthed in Tequixquiac around 1870; this sacrum had been cut and perforated to give it the form of a wolf or coyote-head. Another interesting discovery of immature mammoth bones showing butchery marks was made in Santa Isabel Iztapan; cutting implements associated with these bones were a scraper and an obsidian blade, and, particularly noteworthy, a flint projectile point found between two of the animal’s ribs. Another cranium was found facing upwards and was undoubtedly placed this way to facilitate removal of the brain; some tools were associated with this mammoth. More recently, new finds, for example in Tlapacoya, seem to date the presence of man in the Valley of Mexico to around 20,000 years ago. |
