MEXICO CITY, MEXICO—While digging foundations for lamp posts near Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral, engineers discovered a stone slab thought to cover the tomb of one of the first Catholic priests in Mexico after the Spanish conquest in 1521. The slab, engraved with the name Miguel de Palomares, had been placed in the floor of what archaeologists think was once an Aztec temple. “The Spaniards, Hernán Cortes and his followers, made use of the pre-Hispanic structures, the temples, the foundations, the floors,” Raúl Barrera of the National Institute of Anthropology and History told the Associated Press. Palomares died in 1542 and is known to have been buried inside the city’s first cathedral, near an altar. This structure was torn down in the 1620s, after a larger cathedral had been built next to it. A hole is thought to have been drilled into the slab for a wooden pole or cross hundreds of years later. To read in-depth about archaeology in Mexico, go to "Under Mexico City."
