No imaginings of mine were sufficient to prepare me for Teotihuacan. The wonder started when we got close and spotted dozens of hot air balloons floating over the site.
That in itself was not too extraordinary, as I knew that hot air ballooning was something you could do at Teotihuacan.
What was extraordinary was having to stop the car to avoid colliding with a balloon which came perilously close to landing in the middle of the road.
Unplanned I’m guessing, from the looks of apprehension on the faces of the occupants of the balloon’s basket. It passed directly in front of our stopped car about a foot above the pavement. A burst of flame from the burner and it popped up just high enough to crash into some bushes beside the shoulder of the road, finally landing in a field.
Welcome to Teotihuacan, place of marvels.
The first sight of this place is staggering, even coming into it at a point about as far away from the pyramids as you can be, as we did. The main thoroughfare, called The Avenue of the Dead, is about 4 to 5 kms long. The Pyramid of the Moon stands at one end. The Pyramid of the Sun stands on one side not far from the Pyramid of the Moon. The Temple of the Feathered Serpent and the Citadel are at the other end of the avenue.
These pyramids are simply colossal. And unlike Cholula they are right out there for you to (try) to take in.
Looking at photos cannot convey the sheer immensity. In fact, I sat across from the Pyramid of the Sun for about an hour, waiting for our daughter-in-law Karen to climb it and descend again, and I found myself looking away and then back again to confirm that I was really seeing what I was seeing.
No one knows precisely when, why or by whom this place was founded. However, at its zenith, Teotihuacan was an immense city, covering about 30 square kms and home to something like 150,000 to 250,000 people, making it one of the largest cities in the world at that time (about 450 A.D.). The inhabitants included potters, craftspeople and jewellers. It controlled nearby obsidian mines and was the centre of obsidian craft work and trade. There is evidence that it was a cosmopolitan city, with different quarters occupied by different ethnic peoples – Otomi, Zapotec, Maya and others – who lived in multi-family apartment-like compounds.
The people of this place worshipped many gods, including what has been designated the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan (long thought to have been male), Tlaloc the goggle eyed god of rain and storms, and the Feathered Serpent.
Its signature architectural style of inward sloping external sides surmounted by a rectangular platform gives the structures a sort of stepped appearance.
We went first to the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent. It is mostly blocked by a building of later date, called the Citadel.
Our guide told us that this covering up of the front face of the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent occurred because the Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcoatl, fell out of favour. I have read other theories disputing this. The other three faces of the pyramid were left exposed after all. And we know that the Temple of the Moon was added to over time, burying earlier structures.
I cheated and scooted around to the side of the Citadel, where I saw the remains of the feathered serpents, with archaeologists still hard at work.
Heavy rain in 2003 caused a sinkhole, disclosing the existence of a tunnel under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. It is believed to have been sealed in 200 A.D. Work on that has been going on ever since.
They discovered a 100 metre long corridor with many galleries in the rock. Thousands of objects have been recovered including mysterious metal spheres whose purpose is unknown, a miniature mountainous landscape with tiny pools of liquid mercury representing bodies of water, and a ceiling impregnated with Fool’s Gold which would have glittered in torchlight like the night sky.
The end of the passage was guarded by four greenstone figures, fully clothed, with eyes made from precious minerals. Two of them were positioned to look up towards the axis of the three spheres – the heavens, the earth and the underworld. It is thought they represent the founding shamans of Teotihuacan.
These objects were not to be seen in Mexico. Their first public appearance is at a show currently being staged at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and travelling later to L.A. Presumably this was part of the price paid by Mexico for the Americans’ helping to finance the excavations.
We climbed the Citadel and got a better view of the front of the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, which excavations have now exposed.
If you count up the number of feathered serpent heads on the front face and multiply by the four sides, you get 260 heads, assuming the exposed sides once had the same decoration as the front. This conveniently is one for each day of the ritual calendar.
When the city was ‘alive’, the structures would have been painted in shades of dark red. The National Museum of Anthropology has a stunning recreation of part of The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan as it would have looked when in use.
We know that, like the Aztecs and Maya, this culture practiced human sacrifice. One theory is, in essence, that as there is nothing more potent or powerful than the life force, sacrificing this to the gods helps the gods remain strong, which in turn, preserves all of creation.
Specifically, sacrificing human lives would help keep these massive buildings standing. It is thought that the many men who were beheaded, bludgeoned to death, had their hearts cut out or were buried alive, were mostly enemy prisoners of war. Strong predator animals were imprisoned in cages and also buried alive: cougars, wolves, eagles, venomous snakes.
In the 1980s the remains of 200 hundred people were found buried beneath the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent. These people, with their hands bound behind their backs, are thought to have been sacrifices when the Temple was dedicated around 150-200 AD.
Boy, I bet the Queen is glad building dedications nowadays only involve cutting a ribbon. She uses a shovel to put a ceremonial spadeful of dirt on a commemorative tree. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess she wouldn’t be up for putting a similar spadeful on someone being buried alive.
The goggle eyed figures alternating with the serpents were originally thought to represent the rain god Tlaloc, but some scholars believe either that they are the crocodile Cipactli or the Fire Serpent Xiuhcoatl. Pieces of obsidian in their eyes make them glitter in the sun.
Undulating serpents are found everywhere, under the heads of the gods, and on the sloping walls. Seashells and other marine objects can also be discerned.
Originally the buildings of Teotihuacan, from palaces and temples to the more humble apartment complexes, were decorated with thousands of murals. The artistry of the mural painters has been compared favourably to that of the painters of Renaissance Florence. They have mostly disappeared from the main complex, either destroyed by the passage of time, or taken away to the National Museum of Anthropology.
After we finished with the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent and the Citadel, our guide took us out of the main complex and down some barely passable back roads. He said he had a surprise for us. We said nothing, but I know we were all wondering why we couldn’t just get on to the main event – the big pyramids. We came to a maze of ruins literally off the beaten track.
Karen and I privately wondered why we were bothering, but dutifully got out of the car and tried to muster some enthusiasm. Our grandson Simon was feeling ill by then and opted to stay in the car. It turned out that we had arrived at the remains of the Palace of Tetitla, and then after we drove on a little further, to the Palace of Atetelco.
We walked down beside some ruined walls, came around a corner and discovered an authentic treasure.
Some of the charming murals of Teotihuacan, still in their original position.
One of my favourites was the eagles, which we were told looked fierce, but which to my eye just looked like fuzzy hatchlings on a bad hair day.
There was even a dog. The lines coming from its mouth (under the tongue – barely distinguishable in the photo I’m afraid) were identified on a sign as a speech bubble.
I wonder if the Teotihuacanos taught their dogs to “Speak!”
We agreed afterwards that this was one of the highlights of our visit to Teotihuacan. No other tourists were around to spoil the sense of discovery; of stumbling into a place where you felt the original inhabitants had just stepped out for a moment.
We even found the original of the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan.
I had seen a reproduction in the wonderful Museum of Anthropology.
But to see this lady, as she was put on a plastered wall about 1600 years ago, was amazing.
We did cringe a little though at the way the murals were almost complete exposed. At most, there might be a tarpaulin forming a sort of roof over them.
There were some other wonderful murals in the main site of Teotihuacan, although not nearly as many as at the ruined palaces. I loved the parrots.
They also appeared on columns.
This fellow still had his obsidian eye. He was part of a courtyard in the Palace of Quetzalpaplotl.
You can go underground at this palace, to view decorated pillars and colourful designs.
And stairs leading mysteriously to nowhere.
Poor Simon felt worse as the day went on. He managed to come along to see the pyramids, but was wildly disappointed to feel unable to climb them. That had been something (along with the quest for Mexico City’s best taco), that had been at the top of his list of things to do.
Our intrepid daughter-in-law had little difficulty getting up and down the Pyramid of the Moon, where we went next. It has three very wide staircases, so even though there was a large number of people climbing it by that point, it was not congested.
That’s Karen in the dark jacket on the Pyramid of the Moon, standing to the left of the man in the blue jacket.
Karen said the view from the Pyramid of the Moon was fantastic, as it looks down the Avenue of the Dead and you can see the whole site.
She also scrambled up the 248 steps of the Pyramid of the Sun, along with about a million other people. The Pyramid of the Sun, being on one side of the Avenue, mainly looks out over the countryside.
Teotihuacan fell about 1,000 years before the rise of the Aztecs. The Aztecs had no knowledge of who had lived there, but declared the monumental site to be the birthplace of the gods. Initially it was believed that invaders had sacked and burned the city about 550 A.D. approximately 700 years after it was founded. Later excavations showed that it was mostly the largest public and sacred buildings which had been burned, giving rise to a theory that the common people had revolted against their rulers.
Its decline coincides with periods of drought due to a period of climate change in 535-536. Juvenile skeletons unearthed at the site and dated to the period of the decline show evidence of malnutrition.
One theory is that the eruption of a volcano in El Salvador about 535 A.D. caused these changes and the consequent crop failures. That eruption had 20 times as much volcanic material as the St. Helen’s eruption in 1980, resulting in ash and pumice blanketing an area 10,000 square kms. One commentator believes the ash would have been waist deep. The eruption was so powerful, it caused the complete collapse of that volcano and resulted in the formation of a huge lake in El Salvador, something like what happened in the Mediterranean with Santorini/Thera.
Our only complaint about the tour was the order in which we were taken to various sites. We arrived right at opening time, when there was pretty much no one in the place. Here you can see the number of people at the top of the Pyramid of the Sun when we arrived.
Maybe two or three? Wouldn’t it have been terrific to get that pretty much to yourself?
I don’t know why Fernando, our guide, left the Pyramid of the Sun to the end of our tour. By the time we arrived there, it was the hottest and busiest time of day. It took Karen nearly an hour to get up and back since the lines to climb it were so long. There was a queue switching back and forth four times about half way up. The steps on the upper portion only allow for about four people abreast, and had to accommodate people both going up and coming down.
Karen said once she did get up, she had a very long wait in line in order to get down. The actual climb probably wouldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes had it not been for the crowds.
Instead of the handful of people up there when we arrived, here’s what it looked like from the back right after we left.
I do wonder why people are allowed to climb it. Think of the damage those millions of feet must do every year. Still, like most tourists, I am glad we got our chance before they decide to do the responsible thing and close the steps to human traffic, as they have done at Chichen Itza and Tulum.
So Auntie Awesome’s advice on Teotihuacan is, get there at opening time and head straight for the Pyramid of the Sun, especially if you intend to try climbing it.
Even if you don’t climb it, you’ll still have a better chance of getting photos without crowds of people.
And do go. It is one of the most incredible places I have seen in my travels.