Teotihuacán

Little is known about the people who built the ancient city of Teotihuacán, one of the largest, most impressive archaeological sites in the Americas. During the city’s heyday it was Mesoamerica’s most powerful social and political hub. The structures were built between 100 B.C. and A.D. 250, accommodating as many as 200,000 people and forming the largest and most sophisticated city in the Western Hemisphere and comparable with its contemporaries in the Roman Empire. During its height, the influence of the Teotihuacáno empire was felt throughout Mesoamerica. Whatever civilization produced Teotihuacán lasted roughly until the 7th century A.D., but despite its obviously complex technology, left behind no writing system or any other hints as to who built the city. It is clear from the types of artifacts excavated within the pyramids and temples that the builders of Teotihuacán were a heavily militarized society, not unlike the later Toltecs and Aztecs. More than 1,200 human skeletons have been discovered amid the ruins, all of them thought to have been sacrificial victims.

Archaeologists believe a four-chambered lava-tube cave in the Valle de Teotihuacán prompted the choice of location for the construction of the original monuments. Considered places where gods and ancestors emerged, as well as doors to a magical underworld, caves played an important role in Mesoamerican religion. Teotihuacán’s Pyramid of the Sun was built directly over the cave in the 2nd century a.d.

The site flourished until about A.D. 750, when it was abandoned and set afire. Some researchers suggest the calamity may have been a war between Teotihuacán and Cacaxtla, a smaller contemporary city in nearby Tlaxcala. Over the centuries, pyramids, citadel, temples, palaces, plazas, and paved streets remained deserted and forgotten until the Aztecs arrived in a.d. 1200. Recognizing the site’s formidable history, the Aztecs named the ruins Teotihuacán, or “place where gods are born.” The Aztecs used Teotihuacán as a pilgrimage center; according to Aztec legend, the sun, moon, and universe itself were created here. Though awestruck by the city’s size, the Aztecs probably knew less about the site than we know today.

The most visited archaeological site in Mexico, it is also among the world’s most researched and excavated archaeological sites—“loved to death” according to some. Even though it is a national icon and a major center of tourism, government support has been ambivalent and commercial exploitation of Teotihuacán has been ongoing. UNESCO has designated the ruins a World Heritage Site, and the World Monuments Fund added them to its list of the world’s 100 most endangered monuments in 1998, noting that a permanent conservation program and tourist management plan are badly needed. In an ominous sign of how effective that is came with the news that retail giant Wal-Mart was opening a store only a kilometer from the edge of the archaeological zone.