Ah-ah, found it! It's mentioned in Karl Taube's and Mary Miller's "An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya" as a termination ritual, which is that when the Mesoamericans came to the end of a cycle or the end of the use of a building, they would ritually deface it, destroying the more powerful manifestations. An example given is of Olmecs who groud down to dust the colossal heads and the altar-stones (leaving a hole in the central platform), before burying the whole structure under layers of specially prepared sand. (a similar Aztec custom on a smaller scale was the breaking of all household crockery at the end of the 52-year cycle)
(got your email about Chinese folklore, will probably answer it tomorrow as it requires some diving into my archives)
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It's mentioned in Karl Taube's and Mary Miller's "An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya" as a termination ritual, which is that when the Mesoamericans came to the end of a cycle or the end of the use of a building, they would ritually deface it, destroying the more powerful manifestations. An example given is of Olmecs who groud down to dust the colossal heads and the altar-stones (leaving a hole in the central platform), before burying the whole structure under layers of specially prepared sand.
(a similar Aztec custom on a smaller scale was the breaking of all household crockery at the end of the 52-year cycle)
(got your email about Chinese folklore, will probably answer it tomorrow as it requires some diving into my archives)