|Niche holding carved stone monument at the time of its
discovery at Zazacatla in the Mexican highlands. Photo courtesy
INAH-Morelos. (zoom)| An early 1970s aerial photograph of one of
the plots forming the site known as Zazacatla, just outside
Cuernavaca in the Mexican state of Morelos, shows a large
platform with a very large destruction hole in its southern
portion. Existence of an archaeological site there in the
Municipality of Xochitepec was officially reported in the middle
1980s, although no exploration was carried out. Nevertheless,
knowledge of the presence of archaeological remains in this
place must have existed since much earlier, given the fact that
the original Mexico City-Acapulco road, built several decades
ago, practically runs through the ancient site. In the early
1990s, when the old Mexico City-Acapulco road was enlarged to
make way for the current superhighway linking these two cities,
no better consideration was shown for the site. Not only did it
go unreported without any salvage archa