Teotihuacan Pyramids

The ruins of Teotihuacan reveal the story of a great city-state that once was a political and economic powerhouse, ruling over this region of central Mexico.

From its roots as a small town in the year 1 AD, Teotihuacan’s population growth took off over the following centuries. At its peak, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the Americas, home to over 125,000 people.

Supporting the city’s population was an intensified system of agriculture, control over valuable obsidian deposits and a plethora of artisan workshops, all of which powered a trade network that exported the city’s goods for thousands of miles around.

Teotihuacan’s influence was spread across Mesoamerica. Archeologists have uncovered ornaments from Teotihuacan as far away as the Mayan cities of Tikal and Kaminaljuyu in Guatemala. People from other regions, such as Oaxaca and the Gulf Coast, migrated to Teotihuacan, where they lived in ethnically distinct neighborhoods, practiced their traditional customs and enabled trade with their home regions.

By the sixth century, Teotihuacan’s influence was at its peak but the valley’s natural resources were under increasing strain from the city’s growing population. Deforestation was causing shortages of timber. Drought and challenging climatic conditions were impacting the city’s agriculture. The city’s people were losing faith in their leaders.

Teotihuacan’s decline was sparked by an uprising of the city’s residents against their ruling elites. Scholars debate the exact date of the uprising, placing it between 500 - 650 AD.

The palaces that lined the Avenue of the Dead were torched, and symbols of the elites destroyed. The city’s elites fled to smaller settlements across central Mexico. The artisans closed their workshops as the city’s trade network collapsed. The city remained inhabited for several more centuries, but was no longer the center of a political and economic empire.

All that remained as a trace of this once powerful civilization was the ruins of the great Pyramids of the Sun and Moon. These vast and imposing monuments have marked the site of Teotihuacan ever since.

The ruins of Teotihuacan have been well preserved over the centuries, and today, the city is one of the most visited archeological sites in the Americas. These expansive ruins offer a glimpse of the great civilization that built this city, which reached the peak of its power around 100 - 550 AD.

A visit to the archeological site involves traversing the Avenue of the Dead. This dramatic name was chosen by the Aztecs; how Teotihuacan’s residents referred to their streets and monuments has been lost to time. The Aztecs mistakenly thought that the buildings lining the avenue were tombs, when they were in fact the palaces that housed the city’s elites and administration.

A walk along the avenue passes the city’s three main pyramids.

At the north end of the avenue sits the Pyramid of the Moon, aligned with the sacred Cerro Gordo mountain behind. Built in several stages and completed in the fifth century, this pyramid contained the bodies of several sacrifical offerings, including animal and human victims, buried alongside precious offerings of jade and obsidian.

A short distance to the south is the enormous Pyramid of the Sun. Completed early in the city’s history around 250 AD, it is one of the largest pyramids of the ancient world surpassed only by the Pyramids of Giza and the large structure at Cholula, Puebla. A 100 meter (330 ft) long tunnel has been discovered under the pyramid, which was used for spiritual rituals.

The avenue continues south until reaching the Ciudadela, the city’s principal administrative and ceremonial center. The Ciudadela marks the central point of the ancient city, although it is at the southern end of the excavated archeological site.

Inside the Ciudadela the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, which honors the god known to the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl. Although smaller than the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, this pyramid is elaborately decorated with carvings of fire serpents, representing militarism, sacrifice and authority. As many as 200 victims of human sacarifice have been discovered within the pyramid. Dressed in military outfits and buried alongside weapons, their sacrifice was perhaps a funerary ritual for an important leader of Teotihuacan who had been laid to rest in a tomb inside the pyramid.