W a y m a r k s ~: A Visit to Teotihuacan

In 2011, after completing one of the longest and most unusual journeys of my life, I found myself in Mexico City. The journey from Tokyo, via Krasnoyarsk, Frankfurt, and Chicago, travelling by cargo plane took several days (see here). A journey which now means I have the unique distinction of having two entry stamps in my passport – for Chicago and Mexico City – both issued on the same day! … Undoubtedly though, one of the real highlights of this epic voyage across the northern hemisphere was witnessing the spectacular view from the cockpit as the plane descended through the mountains surrounding Mexico City on a moonlit night as we came into land.

I was in Mexico City leading a team installing an exhibition at the National Anthropology Museum; which in itself was a real dream come true for me in many ways because when I was younger I had been deeply fascinated by the great Pre-Columbian civilisations of the Americas. For my twelfth birthday I’d been given a subscription to the National Geographic Magazine and for several years thereafter, each month when a new edition arrived, I would avidly scour the pages of each issue looking for any news of the on-going archaeological excavations taking place in various parts of Mexico and also Peru – the Maya and the Incas being of foremost interest to me. Hence, now that I was finally in Mexico, seeing with my own eyes the jade burial suit of Pacal, ruler of the Mayan city of Palenque, found in 1949 inside his undisturbed tomb deep within the Temple of Inscriptions, lying beneath an enormous ornately carved stone sarcophagus lid, was one of many highlights. Another was a day’s visit to the ancient city of Teotihuacan.

Jade Death Mask of Pacal from Palenque

The National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City

The rise and fall of the vast monumental city of Teotihuacan was near enough contemporary with the height of Imperial Rome. The antiquity of the site is attested to in its very name – Teotihuacan is an Aztec word meaning “the place where men became gods.” Even to the Aztecs this was a much fabled and mysterious place of much older ruins – much as Stonehenge in Britain would have been to the conquering Romans. There are no inscriptions or written records relating to the site of Teotihuacan, all that we know about it and the people who built it and lived there is derived from modern archaeological excavations. Its deep cultural influence though is clear throughout the many different cultures which came after it across the entire region, from the Toltecs to the Maya and the Aztecs – peoples who similarly built vast ceremonial cities with giant step pyramids as the focal points of their religious beliefs and their famously bloody practices of human sacrifice.

The Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan

At its height Teotihuacan is thought to have had a population somewhere between 80,000-200,000 people, occupying an area of some 23 square kilometres. The central ceremonial site itself occupies a vast space of around four square kilometres. The great stone pyramids and temple complexes arranged along a wide two kilometre long ceremonial avenue are today enormous dark stone edifices – faded monuments to a more colourful past. Originally these pyramids would have been faced with white plaster and painted with brightly coloured murals, some of which have been preserved in parts of the site and are still visible today. How the culture of Teotihuacan met its eventual demise – either through war or famine or some other natural disaster – remains an open question.

The two main pyramids which dominate the ruined city are thought to have been dedicated to the Sun and the Moon. The Pyramid of the Sun being the larger of the two. These are the ones which everyone who visits Teotihuacan climbs to take in the panorama and thereby gauge the immense grandeur of the site. When I visited it was only possible to climb to the first platform of the Pyramid of the Moon, but it’s a point of pride for everyone who visits to make it to the top of the massive Pyramid of the Sun – no mean feat when done in the burning windless heat of the sun given that there is next to no shade at any point during your ascent. That said though, the climb is more than worth the effort because the view from the top, some 70 metres from the ground, is astounding.

The pyramid’s footprint is almost exactly the same size as that of the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, but, given its stepped nature and the angle of its sides, it is nowhere near as tall. Again, like the great Egyptian pyramid though, the Pyramid of the Sun is also accurately aligned, such that on two days of the year (May 19^th and July 25^th) the sun is located directly overhead at midday; and the west facade also faces the point where the sun sets on those two days. The alignment of the rest of the city is thereby determined by the very precise positioning of the Pyramid of the Sun. As you stand on the top it is remarkable to think that the 2.5 million tonnes of stone and earth below your feet from which it is constructed was done so without the aid of metal tools or wheeled vehicles, or even proper beasts of burden for that matter. It’s a truly man-made feature of the landscape.

The Pyramid of the Moon, Teotihuacan

Unlike many of the later Mayan and Aztec temples which began as small structures which were then successively overlaid and elaborated with increasingly larger versions until they had swelled to vast monumental proportions, the Pyramid of the Sun is thought to have been built in a single phase with perhaps only a very small platform initially built and now shrouded within its centre. In 1971 archaeologists discovered a tunnel which lead to a small clover-leaf-shaped cave directly under the centre of the pyramid. It seems certain that this cave represents some sort of inner sanctum or ‘holy of holies’ around which the great pyramid and the entire ceremonial site itself was built. Sadly, although probably very wisely, this cave is inaccessible to the visiting public. There are many theories regarding the spiritual significance of this cave. Some of the most plausible seem to be connected to later Aztec legends associated with the god Tlaloc, god of the rain and bringer of fertility, as the cave seems to have originally been the site of an underground spring. Other theories associate the cave with subterranean creation myths which abound in various local cultures throughout the region – certainly caves beneath pyramids seem to be a feature of other later pyramid sites as well, such as those built by the Aztecs.

Obsidian

Having visited Teotihuacan and stopping at a nearby obsidian factory to see how this extraordinary natural black volcanic glass has been traditionally worked for centuries (I later bought an obsidian polished mirror, which you can read about here), it was time for lunch. The best local place for lunch in the area is undoubtedly La Gruta. Operating since 1906 this is an open-air restaurant set inside a vast natural cave in an overhanging cliff of tufa stone. Here, served by immaculate white-coated waiters, you can eat lots of traditional Mexican food whilst watching dancers performing Aztec-inspired and traditional Hispanic dances on stage. It’s a great way to round off your visit to Teotihuacan and a pleasant way to escape from the fiercely hot sun, relaxing in the subterranean cool of the enormous arched cave drinking a chilled bottle of cerveza or several!