6th Century Pyramid Found under Mexican Passion Play Site

As many as a million Mexicans have watched an annual reenactment of the crucifixion of Christ unaware that a pyramid of the Teotihuacan culture lay under the soil on which they stood.

The excavation of the pyramid in Iztapalapa, a neighborhood on the east side of Mexico City, astonished the local residents. "People just couldn't believe there was a pyramid there," archaeologist Jesus Sanchez said. Now, however, the people are proud of the find and help to preserve the artifacts.

Archaeologists have decided not to excavate the site completely, in order to avoid disrupting the Christian rites, which began in 1833 in the wake of a cholera epidemic. The pyramid is believed to have been abandoned nearly a thousand years earlier.