On the night of the 21st of February 1978, on a residential street in Mexico City, a group

of workmen were digging through the hard asphalt of the road. They worked for the Mexico City

electric company and their job was to run cables across the street and through the whole neighborhood.

At first it seemed like just another day at work, but then just over two meters into the earth

their diggers struck something. It was an enormous piece of stone and as they excavated further

around it they saw that this stone was carved in ornate and intricate patterns. They quickly

notified the archaeologists at Mexico's National Institute of History and Anthropology and all

construction work in the area was stopped. Flots of archaeologists descended and excavations began

to discover what this remarkable stone was. The more they uncovered the clearer the picture became.

This was a carved stone disk measuring over three meters in diameter. On its surface was the image

of a woman, a goddess, naked and decapitated, surrounded by snakes and skulls and wearing a crown of

feathers. This was a depiction of a god named Coil Shao Qui who was worshiped by the ancient

indigenous people of Mexico who today we call the Aztecs. The discovery of this stone sparked an

outburst of interest in what else might lie beneath the surface of Mexico's city.

The president of Mexico issued a decree ordering the entire city block to be demolished and excavated.

In all 13 buildings in the neighborhood were torn down and the more they uncovered the more

excited the archaeologists became. They found that the stone disk had been placed at the base of

an enormous set of stairs which led up to a platform on which the ruins of a great pyramid once sat.

This was the main temple of a city that had once stood beneath the streets of Mexico City

and had been completely erased by time. This city was called Tenosh Titlan and it was once the heart

of a powerful empire. The excavations in Mexico City would go on for another four years and every day

its people would come and watch as the ruins of a buried civilization rose out of the familiar streets.

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