World’s largest pyramid lay hidden under a ‘mountain’ for CENTURIES
Brutal Spanish conquistadors failed to notice massive religious monument when they built a little church atop it to celebrate slaughtering thousands of locals
THEY were the vicious Spanish invaders who fancied themselves as a superior people when they brutally conquered South America.
But it turns out the conquistadors couldn't have that clever, because they failed to notice the world's largest pyramid even though they built a little church on top of it.
The Great Pyramid of Cholula lay undiscovered for centuries until it was finally unearthed in 1910.
It has a base four times the size of the Egyptian Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and has twice the volume - making it the largest monument of all time.
But it was buried under grass, soil and trees for hundreds of years, with locals from the Aztec city of Cholula rumoured to have covered it up as Hernan Cortez and his men approached in 1519.
Their fears were well placed, because the brutal conquistadors slaughtered about 10 percent of the town's 100,000 inhabitants, before erecting the church of Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remediosa on top of what appeared to be a small mountain.
What they didn't know was that this hill was a gigantic pyramid built from mud bricks, which the locals knew as Tlachihualtepetl (man-made mountain).
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David Carballo, an archaeologist at Boston University, that construction of the huge pyramid probably started in 300BC and was then added to on six different occasions.
He said: “They made a conscious effort to maintain and in some cases display previous construction episodes. This is pretty novel, and shows deliberate efforts to link to the past."
It was rediscovered in 1910 by workers building an asylum for people with mental illnesses. Archaeologists then discovered the grim remains of decapitated children and no less than 63 skeletons - testament to the appalling child sacrifices thought to be carried out by the Inca.
The pyramid is now open to visitors, with five miles of tunnels dug through the stucture so tourists can walk right inside the massive monument.
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