Ancient North America:
Teotihuacan

The ruins of Teotihuacan are found in the Valley of Mexico near ancient Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), capital of the Mexica (Aztecs), in the mountains of central Mexico. The modern town of Cuernavaca ("Horns of the Bull") is nearby.

Teotihuacan is much more ancient than many cities in the area. The site was probably first settled in 150 B.C. It grew massively from 100 B.C. - A.D. 200, populated by a poorly known people. It was surely a religious, agricultural and trade centre. It was one of the most important cultural centres in Mexico, and art and culture from this peroiod are found throughout southern North America, right into southern Mexico, which later became the Mayan cultural area.

In A.D. 600 it had one of the biggest populations in the world, over 125,000 people.

It was destroyed in A.D. 750. The centre of cultural influence passed to the south. The Toltec Empire of about 900-1100, based in Tula, southern Mexico, ruled much of the Valley of Mexico. The Tula were finally expelled by waves of "barbarian" immigrants, tribes of "Chichimecans" from northern Mexico.

One of these Chichimecan tribes, called the Mexica (later the Aztecs), arrived in the area around A.D. 1200. Through clever diplomacy, well-planned marriages and political skill, they formed the Triple Appliance (three major city-states). In 1428, this alliance conquered and subjugated most of central Mexico and was only stopped by the arrival of the Spanish. The Aztecs ruled a feudal society and were renowned for their brutality and organizational skills.

After A.D. 750, other people (including the Aztecs) occupied the site of Teotihuacan and built a new city over the ruins of the old. They had many myths and legends about the original creators of the city. Teotihuacan was a vitally important religious and ceremonial centre, a link to the ancient past of the Valley of Mexico.

Throughout its history, Teotihuacan was a great urban centre, filled with fantastic art and culture. Teotihuacan was intimately linked to most of the great cities of pre-European Mexico, and perhaps elsewhere in North America.

Teotihuacan was meticulously planned in a complex grid pattern: every 57 metres there were street intersections. As in many cultures, religion played a crucial role. Temples functioned as the centres of many local "communities" within the city. Foreigners were segregated in a separate section of the metropolis, and the city was divided by wealth, status and occupation.

Buildings and ruins spread from one horizon to the other. Dozens of ornate facades and temples litter the site. These often have bizzare, beautiful sculptures, as well as brightly painted frescoes of mythical and religious scenes.

The pyramids are some of the oldest structures. No-one knows the original names or purpose of the pyramids; unlike the Egyptian monuments, they were apparently not graves but platforms for temple-structures erected on the flat tops, a pattern followed in the Mississippian cities in the Central U.S.A. The Pyramid of the Sun has over 1,000,000 cubic metres of earth and stone. Unfortunately, over-zealous archaeologists and historians innacurately reconstructed it in 1905-1910, so its current shape may not be original. In another historical disaster, like the Egyptian pyramids, the fine coverings of the Teotihuacan pyramids and buildings were removed when the ruins were treated as quarries by the colonial Spanish overlords.

If you want to see the "downtown" of Teotihuacan and a map of this ancient city, view the Map of Teotihuacan, from the "Atlas of Ancient Archaeology", by Jacquetta Hawkes, page 239. For pictures of these ruins, go to my Photography page and select "Images of Mexico".

Map of Teotihuacan

Photos of Teotihuacan (Select "Images of Mexico")

Historia