Cerro de las Mesas

About 40km/25mi beyond Alvarado, serious students of archaeology should leave the MEX 180, driving through El Callejón in the direction of Tlalixcoyán to visit the archaeological zone at Cerro de la Mesas ("Hill of Altars"), located between the villages of Piedras Negras and Ignacio de la Llave on the flood plain of the Río Blanco. This very extensive site is dotted with hundreds of artificial mounds, many still to be excavated. Digs carried out in the 1940s by the U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology and the National Geographic Society uncovered a whole series of small pyramids, temple platforms, altars, stone carvings and stelae (the oldest dated AD 206) as well as ceramics and 782 elaborately worked items of jade. The finds were all distributed among various museums in Mexico and the USA, so a visit to the site is of little interest to those lacking a specialist background.