Word: oaxaca
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Coconut Planter Rufino Flores Velez was riding along a Mexican trail near the isolated village of Rio Grande in the southwest corner of Oaxaca state. When his horse kicked the corner of a stone sticking out of the dust, he hopped off, investigated, and gathered a gang of peasants to dig up the stone. It weighed about three tons, but at last the peasants managed to turn it over. The underside was covered with elaborate carvings that looked to non-archeological eyes like a man and woman embracing...
Hill of the Toad. Flores duly reported his find, but nothing was done until two novice archeologists, Robin Mills and Morgan Smith of Florida, heard about it in Oaxaca City. By airplane, jeep and saddle horse, Mills and Smith worked their way to roadless Rio Grande, where proud villagers showed them the stone. Part of the stone was covered with hieroglyphics, and five square miles of ground around it was full of exciting traces of an ancient civilization...
Familiar Symbol. Mills and Smith photographed all the stones and reported to Professor Ignacio Bernal, one of Mexico's top archeologists, at Oaxaca City. Bernal recognized the style of the first stone. It was Zapotec, a relic of a high culture that centered around Oaxaca City and reached its peak during the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. Until now, said Bernal, there has been no evidence that the Zapotec culture ever extended as far as the Rio Grande region. The carved symbols on the stone are probably dates, and they may be a help toward deciphering the hieroglyphic writing...
...first day, death had a fiesta. Soon after the roaring pack headed off over rolling junglelands from Tuxtla to Oaxaca (329.3 miles), disaster multiplied near Tehuantepec. A Ford overturned on a curve, and six spectators who had rushed to help its occupants were killed by a second Ford, which came whipping around the blind turn. A bit later, near by, an Italian co-driver died under his Ferrari after it blew a tire and overturned. The survivors tore onward, and at first lap's end a record average speed of 94.86 m.p.h. was set by one of Italy...
Skidding Lancia. The second day's docket called for two laps, from Oaxaca over lofty, roller-coaster roads to Puebla (252.9 miles), then a short (79.5 miles), nightmare stretch girdling a volcano at a height of nearly two miles and then plunging in murderous curves down to Mexico City. Again the Lancias led the pack, and Italy's "King of the Mountains," Piero Taruff, relishing his favorite sort of terrain, hung up lap records of 88 m.p.h. on the long leg, 102.8 m.p.h. on the treacherous short one. Late that night, in a hospital far back...