Teotihuacan

History


The Mexican city of Teotihuacan and the Pyramid of the Moon were built along with the Pyramid of the Sun between 1 A.D. and 250 A.D. The pyramid was discovered in the early 1900's. In the early 1970's, a cave was discovered under the Pyramid of the Sun, leading down a long corridor to a room with artifacts. The artifacts suggest the room was used as a religious shrine before the pyramid was built.

Teotihuacan :

1. 100 BC - 0 AD Proto-Teotihuacan (two small hamlets in northern pocket of Valley of Mexico, population = 5000)
2. 0 BC - 150 AD Teotihuacan I - (Avenue of the Dead, Pyramid of the Sun established)
3. 150 AD - 300 AD Teotihuacan II - (Grid pattern established)
4. 300 AD - 650 AD Teotihuacan III - (Pinacle of development, population = 85,000-200,000)
5. 650 AD - 750 AD Teotihuacan IV - Decline and fall

Besides the major ceremonial pyramids, there were also palaces and temples, especially near the north end of the city surrounding the plaza in front of the Pyramid of the Moon. These included the Palace of Quetzalcoatl, the Butterfly Palace, the Temple of the Feathered Conches, and the Palace of the Jaguars. The sophistication and artistry of the Teotihuacanos can be seen everywhere in the magnificent murals and stone carvings which adorn the walls of the palaces and apartment compounds.

The city met its end around 700 AD through deliberate destruction and burning by the hand of unknown invaders. Although a century earlier, around AD 600, almost all of Teotihuacan's influence over the rest of Mesoamerica had ceased, indicating some sort of internal malaise or decline before the destruction.

The first strains appeared about AD 650. A century later, Teotihuacan was a shadow of its former self. The population had declined so rapidly that the once-proud city was now little more than a series of hamlets extending over an area of about a square kilometer.

Some great catastrophe apparently struck the city in AD 700, reducing its population to below 70,000. Many of its people moved eastward. The city was deliberately burnt and destroyed. Over the years, its buildings collapsed and the pyramids became overgrown with dense vegetation.

Teotihuacan's decline was almost as rapid as its rise to prominence. Even so, eight centuries later, Teotihuacan was still revered far and wide as an intensely sacred place. But no one remembered who had built it or that tens of thousands of people had once lived there.

Away from the Avenue of the Dead, the city continued to live on for another two centuries, although the population of Teotihuacan sunk to only a quarter of its former total. Some sort of crisis overtook all the Classic civilizations of Mesoamerica (including the Maya) two centuries later, forcing them to abandon most of the cities. Some anthropologists believe the crisis may have been a lessening of the food supply caused by a drying out of the land and a loss of water sources to the area.

They speculate that this might have been brought about by a combination of natural climactic shift towards aridness that appears to have happened all over Mexico during the Classic period and the residents having cut all the timber in the valley. Originally there were cedar, cypress, pine, and oak forests; today there are cactus, yucca, agave, and California pepper trees. This change in vegetation indicates a big climate shift.

Although Teotihuacan presents a puzzle to archaeologists because it was a huge city that appears to have arisen without antecedents, the single most important fact which archaeologists have learned about the Classic period in Mexico was the supremacy of Teotihuacan. As the urbanized center of Mexico, with high population and tremendous production, its power was imposed through political and cultural means not only in its native highland habitat, but also along the tropical coasts, reaching even into the Maya area. It's trading and tribute empire was comparable with the Aztec empire that eventually followed it. All other Mexican states were partly or entirely dependent upon it for whatever achievements they attained.

When Teotihuacan fell, around 650 AD, the unifying force in Mesoamerica was gone, and with it widespread inter-regional trade. The Late Classic period saw increasing fractionalization among cultures. In the place of great states, petty kingdoms and militarism arose. From the highpoint of civilization at Teotihuacan, wars became the rule of the day, and for those unfortunate enough to be captured, sacrifice to the gods. Military empires, such as the Toltecs in the twelfth century AD (and later the Aztecs, starting in fourteenth century AD), which grew up from these warring factions were the cultures met by the Spanish in 1519 and largely eradicated by 1521.

Probably the reason that the Spanish were able to conquer the Aztecs in such a short amount of time had less to do with their skill as soldiers and more to do with the fact that the Spaniards physically resembled the descriptions in Aztec legends of the god Quetzalcoatl.

Quetzalcoatl, while symbolized as a feathered serpent, appears also to have been an historic figure - the man credited with bringing civilization, learning, culture, the calendar, mathematics, metallurgy, astronomy, masonry, architecture, productive agriculture, knowledge of the healing properties of plants, law, crafts, the arts, and peace to the native people. He is pictured as a quite different physical type than the natives - fair skinned and ruddy complexioned, long nosed, and with a long beard. He was said to have arrived by boat from the east, and sailed off again years later promising to return someday.



What is behind :

Ancient alien theorists have pointed out that some ancient monuments demonstrate a thorough knowledge of astronomy surpassing knowledge of later cultures. The Pyramid of the Sun at Mexico’s Teotihuacan, lies at the center of a complex of pyramids, each aligned with a planet in the solar system.


Teotihuacan used to be a thriving city and ceremonial center that predated the Aztecs by several centuries. Most likely it was Mexico's biggest ancient city at its peak and the sixth largest city in the world in AD 600.  Teotihuacan began declining sharply around 650 AD, and was almost completely abandoned around 750 AD. No one knows why.



Structure of buildings :

The Pyramid of the Sun

The Pyramid of the Sun, built in the 2nd century AD, dominates the landscape of the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Mexico.It is the third largest pyramid in the world and the largest in the Teotihuacan complex.

This sacred, truncated edifice stood 210 feet high and 650 feet square, a vast pyramid of rubble, adobe mud, and earth all faced with stone. A wooden temple on the summit of the pyramid afforded a spectacular view of the sprawling city below.
The pyramid is actually a succession of pyramids built one on top the other over the centuries. The pyramids and many other structures at Teotihuacan are stepped, rather than smooth sided like the Egyptian pyramids, and the stones of which they are made are not as large as stones used to build Egyptian pyramids. 

At its peak time - most of Teotihuacan was plastered, and the pyramids were painted bright red.

Another fascinating feature of some of the pyramidal structures is that they contain a broad, thick layer of mica, which had to be brought from Brazil, over 2000 miles away! Mica is very flaky and fragile, yet it was brought in very large pieces from great distances (and without wheeled vehicles). Then the mica was used on an inner layer of the pyramid, not where it could be seen. Why? One characteristic of mica is that it is used as an insulator in electronic and electrical things. Was that its purpose here? Another mystery of Teotihuacan.

In 1971, a large cave underneath the Pyramid of the Sun was discovered which throws light on why the pyramid was constructed, and perhaps even on why Teotihuacan itself was built where it was.

The cave is actually a natural lava tube enlarged and elaborated in ancient times. The Teotihuacan Valley is a side valley of the Valley of Mexico and is one of a number of natural basins in the midst of an extensive region of volcanoes, therefore, there are many caves formed from the tubes of old lava flows.

The ancient use of the cave predates the pyramid. Aztec tradition placed the creation the Sun and Moon, and even the present universe, at Teotihuacan.

In Pre-Spanish Mexico, such caverns were symbolic wombs from which gods like the Sun and the Moon, and the ancestors of mankind, emerged in the mythological past. This is an immensely holy spot and the memory of its location persisted into Aztec times.

 The Pyramid of the Moon

The Moon Pyramid is located at the northern end of the Avenue of the Dead, which is the main axis of the city. The pyramid, facing south, was built as the principal monument of the Moon Pyramid complex.

 The five-tiered platform was attached to the front of the Moon Pyramid. It is said that the present pyramid has interior structures within it. However, the pyramid still remains as one of the least understood major monuments in Teotihuacan.

 The five-tiered platform was attached to the front of the Moon Pyramid. It is said that the present pyramid has interior structures within it. However, the pyramid still remains as one of the least understood major monuments in Teotihuacan.

 The Ciudadela

The Ciudadela is a huge enclosure located at the geographic center of the city. It measures about 400 m on a side (i.e. about 160,000 m2), and the interior space is surrounded by four large platforms surmounted by pyramids.

The main plaza had a capacity of about 100,000 persons without much crowding (Cowgill 1983). One of the main functions of this closed huge space may have been ritual performance.

Mysterious Construction :

The city of Teotihuacán is meticulously laid out on a grid which is offset 15º.5 from the cardinal points. Its main avenue, the "Street of the Dead," runs from 15º.5 east of north to 15º.5 west of south, while its most impressive structure, the Pyramid of the Sun, is directly oriented to a point 15º.5 north of west -- the position at which the sun sets on August 13.

The sitting of the Pyramid of the Moon at the far end of the avenue was likewise done with such care that a sight-line directly over the top of the Pyramid of the Sun marks the meridian, thus allowing the priests of the city to fix the times of noon and midnight with complete accuracy.

The olmec Dawning

               Momentous as the developments of the Ocós period had been within Soconusco, other regions of Pacific Mexico were also being brought increasingly into the orbit of the expanding civilizations of South America during this same time frame. In the alluvial lowlands of what today are the states of Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit, the so-called Capacha ceramic complex had appeared about 1450 B.C. One of its hallmarks was a type of stirrup jar whose origins may be traced to the Machalilla culture, another variant of the Chorrera culture from Ecuador. From its toehold on the western coast of Mexico, the Capacha culture managed to penetrate into the interior of the country by following the valley of the Río Grande de Santiago, and sometime around 1300 B.C., distinctive chamber burials -- again suggestive of South American design -- were being cut into the volcanic ash as far inland as the upland site of El Opefio in Michoacán state.

               Archaeologists working in that region have set off the century and a half between 1350 and 1200 B.C. as a distinct phase in the cultural evolution of the area -- a period which they have called the Cherla. The distinguishing characteristic of this period they have likewise identified as "Olmec influence."

               The very mention of the Olmecs prompts us to question: Who were these people, and where did they come from? Certainly, from the time of the discovery of the very first "Colossal Head" in southern Veracruz state in 1862 until well into the 1980's, most of the finds which corresponded to an Olmec art style could be traced to what has been called by Ignacio Bernal "the Olmec metropolitan area," located in the Gulf coastal plain of Mexico. Naturally, this would imply that if the Olmecs originated in the general area of Veracruz and Tabasco states, they would have had to have moved southward across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to have had any appreciable influence on the cultural evolution of the Soconusco region. However, such a postulated movement, especially at the time of the Cherla period, is totally unsupported by any archaeological evidence. On the other hand, there are numerous indicators that a vigorous movement in the opposite direction -- toward the north -- was going on at precisely this time, in which case the so-called Olmec influence must have been a native-born development emanating from Soconusco itself

               One such indicator is the Ocós ceramic style (Clark prefers to call it the "Locona"), which appears to have had a major northward diffusion at this time. Another indicator, less exactly datable to be sure but falling well within the time frame in question, is the degree of differentiation which has taken place between two branches of the Mayan language the tongue that was spoken throughout the Gulf coast region of Mexico as least as far back as 1500 B.C. Morris Swadesh, a renowned proponent of glottochronology, or the dating of languages by their relative differentiation from each other, has argued that Huastec, which is now spoken in the far north of Veracruz state, was separated from Yucatec, which is the indigenous language spoken in the area of Campeche and the Yucatán Peninsula, sometime during the thirteenth century B.C. Although he does not suggest a mechanism for accomplishing such a "split," the most likely possibility would have been the driving of a "wedge" into the Gulf coast region by a non-Mayan-speaking group. Such a wedge, in turn, would far more likely have been the result of a sustained overland movement from the south than an episodic seaborne invasion from the north. The continued presence of peoples of Zoquean speech at the northern end of the Tehuantepec Gap (the Popolucas in the eastern foothills of the Tuxtla Mountains), in the Oaxaca highlands to the west of the Gap (the Mixe), and in the Chiapas highlands to the east of the Gap (the Zoque) -- all of whom were linguistically related to the recently extinguished Tapachulteca dialect spoken in Soconusco -- testifies to the existence of a language whose geographic distribution once bridged the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from the Pacific to the Gulf.


ANGULAR CHRONOLOGY

In the ancient city of Teotihuacan, below the Pyramid of the Moon, there is a structure called The Building of the Altars. In the figure, you can see a central platform, and around the perimeter a platform at each of the cardinal points. Between the cardinal points lie other platforms, which indicate the solstice points. This structure is strictly laid out in reference to the other structures within the city.

Energy Beam

Some tourists screamed, others quickly shot the video on a camera phone, at a time when the Mayan pyramid published the crash. But it was not a consequence of the earthquake, because the next time a brilliant beam of light shot into space, and reverential audience fell silent, without any idea of ??what that means.

That amazing incident was followed by the vortex blast—witnessed and captured on film—shooting from the apex of the famous Aztec Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan, Mexico.