Experts from the INAH Puebla Center were supervising the ground leveling work at the church in Zacapoaxtla, Puebla, Mexico. While checking, a spiral shaped stone glyph was uncovered. (A glyph is any purposeful sign. In typography, a glyph is the specific shape, design or representation of a character.)
Although there is no archaeological evidence to support the historical foundation of Zacapoaxtla, one reference claims that in AD 1270, an explosion of the Apaxtepec volcano buried the town of Xaltetelli, potentially giving rise to Zacapoaloyan, presently known as Zacapoaxtla.
The symbol was probably part of the façade of a pyramid platform with a connection to water before the Spanish conquest, when the area was occupied by the Totonac and Nahua tribes. Many cultures in Mexico have utilized spirals, but the Aztecs are perhaps the most notable. The Aztecs used spirals to resemble natural shapes like water. Spiral is a curve that originates from a center point and rotates around that point, in mathematics. It might remind water for these people.
The find was made in the foundations of an early Christian hermitage and appears to have been symbolically put beneath the altar of the hermitage.
The hermitage is likely the same recorded by contemporary historians, whom describe how Jacinto Portillo, a Spanish conquistador, built the first hermitage at Zacapoaxtla in the 16th century, and would later become a missionary of the Order of Friars Minor of St. Francis, known as Fra Cintos.
Project supervisor, Alberto Diez Barroso: “the glyph contains the representation of a spiral and measures 40 centimetres tall by 16 centimetres wide, and still has the preserved stucco coating.” said.
Given the significance of the hermitage and spiral shaped stone glyph, Manuel Villarruel Vázquez, director of the INAH Puebla Center, is currently in talks with the church parish to preserve the find and put up a viewing glass for the general public according to Heritage Daily.