The ruins of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico were once ancient Mesoamerica’s greatest metropolis. They are now one of history’s most perplexing mysteries.
Fastening the buttons on my flannel shirt to shield myself from the brisk early morning air, I turned south onto Teotihuacán’s mammoth avenida.
A multitude of hot-air balloons flew over me, scattering orbs of bright colors across the cloudless blue sky that hung over the Valley of Mexico. Along with the frequent whooshing sounds from the pilots working their burners, I heard several awe-struck exclamations from marveling passengers as they floated near the apex of the Pyramid of the Sun, Mesoamerica’s most famous landmark.
While there was a sea of onlookers above me, Teotihuacán at ground level was mostly empty. Merchants lining the avenue were just beginning to open their stands and set up their wares; the customary roars of mock jaguar calls coming from Nahua men around the site’s great pyramid had yet to commence.
This was the brief period of terrestrial silence before the daily throngs of tour groups inbound from Mexico City descended. The quiet made it the prime interval for reflecting on what this great metropolis once was, and its mysterious ruins now are.
The Dawning of the Fifth Sun
Starting from the Pyramid of the Sun, it’s around a mile to the southern end of the Avenue of the Dead. Once I completed the walk, I crossed the spacious courtyard of the Cuidadela (Citadel in English) and climbed its steep stairway. Gazing around but never really breaking stride, I was intent on reaching what was nested inside, a structure that is one of the most intriguing in the Americas.
Situated like the focal point of an amphitheater, the western wall of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent is nothing short of sinister in the morning shade. Numerous stone busts of the monstrous plumed deity, known as Quetzalcoatl in the indigenous Nahuatl language, and the Mesoamerican rain god Tlaloc jut out in organized lines from the edifice. Their menacing glares foreshadow what was discovered in and around the temple by archaeologists.
The Pyramid of the Sun looms behind the Avenue of the Dead at the ruins of Teotihuacán in central Mexico. A jaguar wind whistle can be heard in the background. Click the icon in the bottom right corner of the player to expand the video.
Over 200 victims of human sacrifice, many in military dress, were offered to Quetzalcoatl during Teotihuacán’s rise to preeminence between 200-250 CE. As detailed in the book Teotihuacán: City of Water, City of Fire published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the University of California Press, the burials were strategically oriented to face outward as if to defend the temple from unknown supernatural forces.
Meeting the closest sculpture’s stare from the observation area’s railing, I could only wonder what emotions ran through the Mexica people several centuries ago when they first saw Quetzalcoatl’s temple.
Before the colonial Spanish drained Lake Texcoco to construct now-parched Mexico City, the nation’s central valley was a lush agricultural center. The Mexica founded Tenochtitlan on an island near the southern shore of the lake. The preceding peoples to arrive had passed on developing the swampy land, but the Mexica were resourceful: They developed a system of dikes that managed Texcoco’s levels, allowing them to turn an oft-inundated tract into a network of artificial islands that comprised their empire’s capital.
Searching for wisdom from the past to design their soon-to-be sprawling megalopolis, the urban planners of Tenochtitlan looked no further than the nearby ruins of Teotihuacán. The great city had been almost entirely abandoned some seven centuries earlier, but what remained was so profoundly influential that it not only determined the design of Tenochtitlan but also the people’s spiritual beliefs on creation itself.
The Mexica, more popularly known as the Aztecs, were the last of a millennia-long succession of nomadic peoples to make their way from the modern-day American Southwest to the Valley of Mexico. History proved that they were also the greatest; beginning with Obsidian Snake’s ascent to kingship in 1426, the Mexica forged an empire that ruled the region for nearly a century.
Sometime during or after the Mexica strode down the Avenue of the Dead and saw the same Temple of the Feathered Serpent that I was looking at in the morning shadows, they decided this is where the gods convened to make the fifth sun. Their priests taught that four cycles of creation – and subsequent apocalyptic annihilations – had preceded their people’s period of existence. Teotihuacán, they believed, had been the place where the gift of life had been handed from the heavens.
But what of Teotihuacán’s actual origin? Mexica mythology aside, the geological record of the Valley of Mexico says an ancient natural disaster that must have resembled the apocalypse cleared the way for its meteoric rise.
Fire Falling from the Valley Rim
From the vantage points of the several lofty restaurants and bars that line Mexico City’s El Zocalo, the planet’s second largest plaza, you can see in the distance the mountains that ring the former basin of Lake Texcoco. Many of the peaks are volcanic, including the area’s most well-known: Xitle.
Most of pre-Columbian history was lost in the chaos of colonial conquest, but we do know this about Xitle: Around 2,000 years ago, the volcano monumentally changed the course of Mesoamerican history.
It erupted sometime in the first century, spewing a massive amount of molten lava into the valley below. At its base was Cuicuilco, a city-state that dominated central Mexico during the time when the life and early legacy of Jesus Christ was transforming the Old World an ocean away. According to the book Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Rutgers history professor Camilla Townsend, Xitle’s devastation of the urban center was so complete that archaeologists were forced to use dynamite to unearth its ruins.
Returning to the Avenue of the Dead and heading north, I considered the destruction of Cuicuilco and what it must have meant for the communities of the central valley. At minimum, there must have been a sizeable human displacement from the survivorship of the obliterated city to surrounding city-states. At maximum, there may very well have been political chaos and warfare, as Cuilcuilco assuredly left behind a vacuum of authority in the region.*
One thing is for certain: Around a century later between 150-200 CE, the power that suddenly scattered itself when fire fell on Cuilcuilco from Xitle consolidated itself again. This time, it came together on the opposite side of Lake Texcoco at Teotihuacán.
Over a mile away, I could see the faint approaching outline of the Pyramid of the Moon, the northern terminus of the Avenue of the Dead. I remembered that I was walking around 15 degrees to the east of true north, and I looked slightly upward to the more distant mountains.
The avenue points a direct line to the looming Cerro Gordo, another volcanic peak like Xitle. Did Teotihuacán’s designers deliberately build their most important road toward the volatile mountain to appease the gods and avert a similar cataclysmic disaster like the one that befell Cuicuilco? And was it the fallen city’s displaced citizens – or their descendants – who gave rise to the ruins through which I was now walking?
Mentally stopping myself, I shook my head and smiled: Teotihuacán, after all, is a place of endless questions but only few answers.
* In his essay “A Speculative History of Teotihuacán” published in Teotihuacán: City of Water, City of Fire, late Arizona State professor of anthropology George L. Cowgill mentions that Teotihuacán’s initial population increase in the last century BCE was likely from a confederation of native groups banding together against Cuicuilco’s dominance. However, the increase pales in comparison to the surge following the demise of Cuilcuilco approximately two centuries later.
What Was Then Wasn’t
Around halfway to the northern end of the Avenue of the Dead, a sign reading “Museo” pointed toward an unpaved path to the right. I had previously seen some of the impressive exhibits from Teotihuacán’s site museum on the internet, so I didn’t hesitate in making the detour.
The artifacts presented for public display at the museum are only a sampling of what has been uncovered at the ancient city, but the exceptionally crafted monoliths, figurines, jewelry, and ornaments are enough evidence for even a historical layman to form the most baffling question of them all – How could a civilization so advanced and with such sweeping influence throughout Mesoamerica seemingly vanish into thin air?
It’s a tantalizing riddle that makes the ruins of Teotihuacán the greatest unsolved mystery of the pre-Columbian era. Without a decipherable written language or oral history to offer clues, archaeologists and anthropologists have relied upon the telltale traces of Teotihuacáno architecture and artisanry dispersed throughout the ancient area to piece together a loose historical narrative.*
The golden age of Teotihuacán seems to have spanned two major eras, culminating in what many scholars believe was a calamitous uprising that destroyed the city near 650 CE. The first phase occurred after the eruption of Xitle and lasted until the third century. It was during this time that Teotihuacán’s major landmarks – the Pyramid of the Sun, Pyramid of the Moon, and Temple of the Feathered Serpent – were constructed. The first period appears to have ended in its own rebellion: The Temple of the Feathered Serpent was desecrated, and no new major construction projects were ever begun.
So much of the proposed history of Teotihuacán is speculative, but there’s evidence to suggest that the city’s governing elites may have turned their attention from monument building to civic betterments: The archaeological record indicates housing standards for ordinary citizens improved in Teotihuacán’s final centuries. It was also during this time that the mysterious metropolis’s foreign influence reached its pinnacle.
The outline of the city’s cultural impact was vast, stretching east through the distant jungles of the Maya region in Guatemala and Belize to the Gulf of Mexico, south to Honduras, west to the Pacific coast, and several hundred miles north to the American Southwest.
Perhaps the most illustrative example of Teotihuacán’s expansive power and economic sophistication was the northern trade route that brought in turquoise mined by the Anasazi people of present-day Chaco Canyon, New Mexico: As Townsend explains in her book, Teotihuacán built the city of Chulchihuitl around 500 CE with the primary purpose of protecting the transportation of the prized blue-green mineral to the metropolis.** The ruins of Chulchihuitl are in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, an astonishing 500 miles northwest of the Avenue of the Dead and the estimable halfway point to the high-desert canyon.
This feature article is the first half of a two-part series on Teotihuacán’s indelible influence on Mesoamerica. Click to read the second part “Tikal: The Day the King Died.”
Turning attention again to the artifacts in the site museum, Teotihuacán exhibited what I consider to be the most defining hallmark of mankind’s greatest civilizations – the proliferative production of wonderful artistry. Only a society that is flourishing in every critical aspect can provide craftswomen and craftsmen with the significant time, resources, and stability necessary to generate the creative achievements that have been discovered at the ruins.
Like the oft-expensive ingredients procured via trade for paint colors used by Milanese Renaissance masters, Teotihuacán’s commercial system managed to bring in a plentiful supply of materials like obsidian, ceramics, jade, seashells, and turquoise for their artisans. Architects, meanwhile, built towering pyramids and spacious temples, constructing an urban skyline that could be seen from miles away in the central valley.
Teotihuacán wasn’t just a place for artistic excellence, either: Astronomers carefully studied the sun, moon, and stars, expertly guiding municipal planners in orienting the city along an orderly east-west axis. Engineers also developed methods of manipulating the surrounding environment to the advantage of the metropolis, such as the system of stone canals that diverted the San Juan River underneath the Avenue of the Dead.
At its zenith between 200-600 CE, historians believe the artistic and scientific wonder that was Teotihuacán may have held a population of 125,000-200,000 people within its greater area, easily making it one of the most populous in the ancient world. The city wasn’t comprised of a single race but rather several far-flung peoples; the archaeological record shows that sub-communities from Chiapas, the Yucatán Peninsula, the Valley of Oaxaca, and the Maya region likely lived in separate ethnic boroughs within Teotihuacán, growing crops like beans, squash, peppers, and avocados to sustain themselves.
Then sometime around 650 CE, it all came crashing down.
Much like the details of Teotihuacán’s rise, the particulars of the great city’s fall are largely unknown. Many scholars seem to think a peasant revolt, perhaps catalyzed by drought or mistreatment from elites, was responsible for its destruction. Another less heralded theory is foreign military invasion.
Regardless, all signs point to an ironic similarity between Teotihuacán’s ending and that of its powerful predecessor Cuicuilco: Both metropolises succumbed to the element of fire. Teotihuacán was deliberately torched and inexplicably abandoned, slamming the metaphorical book shut on its centuries of magnificence.
In short, the city was, then it suddenly wasn’t.
* The recent discovery of glyphs at Teotihuacán’s ruins have given historians hope that we will one day have a greater understanding of the city. The meanings of the symbols have yet to be determined.
** Several hundred years after the destruction of Teotihuacán, the Anasazi people of the present-day American Southwest’s Four Corners region were forced to flee their cultural homeland during the 13th century. The reasons behind their abrupt exodus are another great historical mystery from the pre-Columbian era.
City of the Gods
Back on the Avenue of the Dead and continuing north, I walked past the Pyramid of the Sun again. This time it was to my right, and the mid-morning crowds had amassed around its western base. There was a murmur of activity on the ground now; merchants were peddling their goods and tour guides were telling their versions of the cryptic history of the ruins.
Although a spectacular disaster destroyed the city and its population inexplicably vanished in the seventh century, Teotihuacán’s story was far from over. Its epic – at least from the perspective of the archaeological record – laid largely dormant until a humble group of nomads established an unlikely stronghold in the central valley almost 700 years later.
The Mexica wandered in from the north in approximately the 13th century, eventually founding Tenochtitlan around 1325 CE. They did so after receiving alleged divine direction from their sun god Huitzilopochtli, who told them to settle where they saw an eagle consuming a snake on a cactus. Almost exactly 100 years later, a man carrying a serpent’s name and born to a slave woman turned the former outsiders into the Valley of Mexico’s last Native American empire.
King Obsidian Snake, an unlikely ruler of longshot champions, confederated the Aztec Triple Alliance with the city-states of Texcoco and Tlacopan that would govern the region until Spanish conquest in the 1520s. The Mexica’s surprising ascent to preeminence proceeded their legendary departure from Aztlan, a territory of unknown location that was supposedly their homeland.
Upon arrival to the central valley, the Aztecs, as the Mexica were later referred to by scholars, added another chapter to their mythology – the story of creation. Their inspiration was Teotihuacán, a word in the Nahuatl language that roughly means “the place where men become gods.” It’s often referred to today as “The City of the Gods.”
According to the book Teotihuacán: The World Beyond the City, the Mexica believed that a sacred fire burned at Teotihuacán sometime after the destruction of the fourth sun.* Two gods sacrificially threw themselves into the flames, transforming into the moon and the fifth sun. This began the time cycle of the Mexica people, one that eventually reached its brightest moment in the Valley of Mexico with the formation of an empire.
Inspired by the ruins of Teotihuacán, the Mexica built their capital city of Tenochtitlan into one of the largest metropolises on the planet: At its height near the turn of the 16th century, the urban center had a population of around 200,000 residents, making it larger than the European capitals of Paris or Lisbon.
Now on close approach to the Pyramid of the Moon, my final stop on my self-guided tour, I pondered the incredible magnitude of the seismic tremors that Teotihuacán sent through history even centuries after the city had been abandoned. Firstly, the Mexica were convinced upon arrival to the central valley that it was where their gods had spawned creation. Secondly, they constructed the last great Mesoamerican urban center partly on its design.
As Tenochtitlan grew rapidly in size and importance, Teotihuacán was never forgotten by the Aztecs. Moctezuma, the last king of the empire, travelled to the lost city every 20 days to perform sacrifices up until at least the arrival of the Spanish. In their fateful meeting in November 1519, he also greeted conquistador Hernán Cortés on Tenochtitlan’s main causeway, a road that was likely inspired by the Avenue of the Dead.
As is well-documented, Cortés and his marauders toppled the Aztecs two years later in August 1521. Moctezuma was killed, perhaps strangled by Cortés. Tenochtitlan, the only Mesoamerican city besides Teotihuacán to reach a population of 100,000 or more, was razed and Lake Texcoco was drained to build Mexico City.
While the Spanish remodeled much of the central valley, “The City of the Gods” stood silently to the northeast. The world around the pyramids and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent changed drastically, but the mysterious ruins’ deliberate orientation continued to mark the months and years of the Mesoamerican calendar.
They soon added up to decades and later centuries.
* The book Teotihuacan: The World Beyond the City was written by Penn State Professor of Anthropology Kenneth G. Hirth, Boston University Associate Professor of Anthropology David M. Carballo, and Guatemala City-based Universidad Francisco Marroquín Museo Popol Vuh Research Associate Barbara Arroyo.
The Idea Live On
Standing atop the Temple of Agriculture adjacent to the Pyramid of the Moon’s capacious plaza, I took in the sweeping north-to-south view of Teotihuacán. The sun was now high in the blue sky; only a smattering of hot-air balloons remained afloat from the early morning armada. The Avenue of the Dead was now busy with tourists.
Off to myself for a minute against the temple roof’s railing, I was struck by the immense timeline of human history that’s preserved within the Valley of Mexico. We have few answers regarding what occurred during the rise, reign, or fall of Teotihuacán. However, its enigmatic ruins that first sprang up in earnest during the second century have told us enough to reveal an epic that rivals that of any ancient culture.
The central valley’s archaeological record is considerably older: Around 40 miles southwest from where I was, the remnants of Teotihuacán’s metropolitan forerunner Cuicuilco have been unearthed at the base of its destroyer, the volcanic mountain peak of Xitle. Cuicuilco was founded several hundred years before Christ legendarily walked on water in the Middle East; that means large-scale civilization is visible today in the Valley of Mexico that dates back well over two millennia.
I left Teotihuacán shortly afterward, returning to Mexico City via public bus. A small group of Nahua men and women, descendants of the Mexica-ruled Aztec Empire, were along for the ride. We were all headed for a place that was once Tenochtitlan and is now the fifth largest metropolis in the world.
The following morning in Mexico City’s world-famous Centro Histórico district, I took in another sweeping view. This time, it was at the northeast corner of El Zocalo. To my left was the Metropolitan Cathedral, which broke ground not long after the Spanish conquered the central valley. In the middle and the actual corner of the giant square was the Aztec ruins of Templo Mayor, the most prominent modern remnant of Tenochtitlan. Finally, to the right was the Palacio Nacional, the seat of executive power of the present-day sovereign nation of Mexico.
Even from a global perspective, I knew the historical symbolism before me was exceptionally rare: The adjacent Aztec temple, Spanish cathedral, and Mexican palace huddled together within the expansive, densely populated city were representations of the central valley’s chronological succession of control across the last six centuries.
Although not structural, I was still able to detect Teotihuacán’s presence in the singular scene. “The City of the Gods” not only inspired the design of Tenochtitlan, but the sacred site was undoubtedly brought up regularly during rites at the Aztecs’ most important temple. In front of the Templo Mayor and spilling across the northern perimeter of El Zocalo, Nahua men and women dressed in their traditional clothing sang and danced: They carry on a cultural mythology that believes life under the Mexica’s fifth sun began at Teotihuacán.
Taking stock of all I had seen at the lost city and Centro Histórico, the audaciousness of Teotihuacán is what struck me most. I meant that in the most admirable way. The Teotihuacános were a culture who pushed the outer limits of the Mesoamerican imagination, dreaming up giant pyramids that continue to reach for the sky and ornate temples that still stir the soul. Nothing in their ancient area of the world had ever come close to their wonderous metropolitan experiment; it was their ability to conjure an absurdly grandiose, seemingly unattainable idea and then collectively breathe it into existence that makes the ruins so captivating to this day.
When the Teotihuacán is considered in those terms, a walk down the Avenue of the Dead is less haunting and more inspiring.
Related Content
– Click to read my feature article “Tikal: The Day the King Died” about how Mesoamerica’s most mysterious metropolis altered the course of Maya civilization on one fateful day. It’s the second half of this two-part series on Teotihuacán’s seismic impact on Mesoamerica.
– Click to view my high-resolution photo collection from Templo Mayor in the Centro Histórico district of Mexico City.
– Click to read my feature article “Alabama: The Mystery of the Welsh Caves” for another enigmatic story from the pre-Columbian era.