Pre-Columbian star war stories have emerged from 23 stone carvings unearthed near the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan, the ancient Aztec center that became Mexico City after the Spanish invasion in 1521.

Providing unique iconographic evidence for Aztec myths, the bas-relief sculptures lay embedded in a strip of floor in front of the Templo Mayor complex, Tenochtitlan's holiest shrine.

Far from being purely decorative, the artistic carvings show symbols of death and crude representations in line with the Aztecs' bloody rituals....