The beginning of the Wikipedia article on this place starts with a little note that says “Not to be confused with Tenochtitlan.” I was definitely confused on this point. I literally didn’t realize this was a different place until after I had already left. 😬

Tenochtitlan (the place we’re NOT talking about today) was the ancient Aztec capital city that was famously sacked by the Spanish when they “discovered” the new world. There’s a lot of super interesting history surrounding this place, but it actually doesn’t exist anymore. The lake that once surrounded it has dried up, and all of it has long since been paved over to make way for modern-day Mexico City.

Teotihuacán is about an hour northeast of Mexico City. It also was not built by the Aztecs, as I had wrongly assumed. We’re in a WHOLE different universe here. So we need to leave the Marvel-verse and enter into a new world of comics nobody has ever heard of. Buckle in because this is some interesting history. Get your hopes up.

A Brief Intro to Teotihuacán

Teotihuacán is one of the most historically, culturally, and architecturally significant cities in the pre-Columbian Americas. At its height, it was the largest city in both North and South America, with a population of 125,000 people (estimated). That might not seem like much today, but by Mesoamerican standards, that’s like Tokyo or New York. This wasn’t just a place—it was THE place. But here’s what makes it so fascinating…

The origins of Teotihuacán are utterly mysterious. The backstory behind its founders is totally unknown. And it’s not just unknown to us now, in 2020. Apparently the Aztecs discovered the ruins of this city and also didn’t know exactly where it came from or what the story was. Isn’t that INSANE? The AZTECS discovered this when it was already ruins! They would later claim some sort of common heritage with the last people known to have inhabited this city, but in terms of an origin story, even they drew a blank. So now we’re left to guess who built this place and who actually lived here. The theory that seems to be carrying the most water right now is that the primary ethnic group associated with this city was an ancient people called the Totonac. However, the archaeological evidence for this is thin, and scholars are now mostly in agreement that this city was probably a multi-ethnic society, with urban planning to accommodate ethnocentric quarters of the city.

All we really know with any degree of certainty about the origins of Teotihuacán is the approximate date of its founding: about 100 B.C., although people had been living and building on this site since about 200 B.C. In this part of Mesoamerica, people had supposedly only just started forming large, centralized settlements about a hundred years earlier, so this is basically the dawn of time for this region. That’s a full 1,000 years before the Aztecs came about. To put that in perspective, to the Aztecs, this was about as old as the Crusades are to us now! Another way to look at this is that today, in the year 2020, we are actually about twice as close to the Aztecs in history as the Aztecs were to whoever founded Teotihuacán. I mean…

Okay, moving on—once it had been established, we still don’t know much about it except what we can surmise from archaeological excavation. I guess that’s the only way we really know anything, but Teotihuacán seems to occupy a particularly sparse section of history, so we don’t have much context to go off of. Here are a few things that we DO know about it…

At its height, this city covered about 11.5 square miles (~30 square kilometers).
The major monuments (of which there are many) took about 350 years to build, with construction running from 100 B.C. to 250 C.E.
This city included multi-family residential compounds to accommodate its burgeoning population (basically ancient apartments, which should speak to how ahead-of-its time this place was).
The height of Teotihuacán’s influence and power was around 450 C.E.
During this time ☝️ Teotihuacán is thought to have been ruled for about 60 years by a figure named “Spearthrower Owl,” which is a name that was invented by archaeologists in the 1990s based a hieroglyphic symbol found in carved stone records here and in the surrounding regions. But honestly, this is just a guess. The symbology and corresponding meanings of this hieroglyph may vary across the available records and we don’t have any way of knowing yet.
Teotihuacán’s influence in the region is well documented in Mayan culture, even after its decline. It is likely that they conquered a number of major Mayan cities during the height of their power.
Teotihuacán was a major industrial hub, playing home to all sorts of craftsmen, merchants, noblemen, etc.
The Teotihuacános practiced human (and animal) sacrifice. This was mostly associated with dedications for construction or expansion of city structures. Sacrifice victims were most likely captured enemy soldiers. These victims were killed in lots of different ways, including having their hearts removed, being decapitated, being buried alive, and being beaten.

And here’s something else fascinating…

The demise of Teotihuacán is also very mysterious. Archaeologists have apparently been able to date evidence of large, intentional, systematic fires in the city to approximately the date we know the city to have been abandoned, so for a long time the presiding theory was that the city had fallen to an outside invasion, wherein the city was burned. However, it has recently been established that the fires in the city were limited to only areas and structures associated with the upper class and intelligentsia of Teotihuacán. This suggests the cause for the downfall of the city actually stemmed from some sort of internal uprising. This would have happened somewhere around 550 C.E.

Why the uprising? Well, we have been able to date some climate-related issues to roughly the same time period. Since Teotihuacán was completely dependent on agriculture to feed its population, a major disruption would have meant famine. These climate related issues include drought, and the eruption of a volcano in modern-day El Salvador that could also have destroyed crops. These events are also associated with increase warfare with neighboring states. It’s easy to see how any of these events could have made for an unhappy population, but we don’t actually KNOW the reason for the collapse. These are all just possibilities.

After the fall of Teotihuacán, people continued to squat in the ruins of this once-great metropolis for a little while, but it was quickly abandoned. In my research, I’ve seen the fall of Teotihuacán referred to as “the Classic Mayan Collapse.” I haven’t done much traveling through Mayan country (and therefore not much research on it), but apparently the phenomenon of massive cities being totally abandoned is not uncommon in Mesoamerican history. Many Mayan cities suffered similar fates. Why abandon major population centers that took hundreds of years to construct? If this seems to you like it defies all logic, you’re not alone. This is one of the great unsolved mysteries of archaeology.

AND THAT BASICALLY BRINGS US TO NOW.

A Day Trip:

Mexico City → Teotihuacán

How do you get from Mexico City to Teotihuacán? When I was getting my ducks in a row for what we would do on this trip, this was the wildcard in my mind. Are there tours and buses that will take you here and back? For sure. But we really didn’t feel like bending our schedule to tour or bus schedules. We wanted to do this on our own terms. We wanted to wake, up go out for coffee in Condesa, and then go straight from there. SO WE CALLED AN UBER! It was probably a 45 minute trip out here, but it was only about 20 USD. The convenience of all this really blew my mind. I love technology. What a time to be alive!

From the back of our Uber, we watched the mountainous outskirts of Mexico City rocket by as we sped along a mostly vacant highway. Out here, things looked quite different than our chic hide-away in Condesa. This was the Mexico I was more familiar with. I hesitate to use the word “slums”… but these communities were clearly in a very different economic place than anything else we had seen of Mexico City so far. But they were also quite striking! The way the colorful cascades of buildings clung to the mountainsides was really picturesque. At one point, after maybe 20 minutes speeding along this highway, we saw a cable car that would go from near the side of the road, up to the highest point. I dropped a pin on the map, intending to come back here after our time in Teotihuacán. In Spanish, I asked our Uber driver if this was a dangerous area, and he gave me an emphatic yes. I still wasn’t entirely dissuaded. Even in Mexico, I was skeptical that 2 large men in broad daylight would be a super attractive target. Combine our demographics with a little street smarts, and I was sure that we would have been fine, but I never got to put my theories to the test. In the end we were not able to return because the traffic on this road was so bad that our next Uber driver didn’t want to go near it. Oh well. Here are the best photos I could get out the window of a speeding car.

When we finally arrived in Teotihuacán, we paid 75 pesos (about 4 USD) each to enter… and that was it! The only other money we spent the entire time we were here was on bottled water. Immediately past the gates, in a large dusty parking lot, we saw a a large pole with 3 brightly dressed men sitting at the top. We wandered over to see what was going on. Just then, a 4th man unceremoniously wandered up to the base of the pole, and began to climb up. When we got to the top, he fastened himself into a harness, and they all began pushing the wooden square they were sitting on in circles. We were thoroughly confused at this point. Soon they all jumped off, putting their full weight against their harnesses, and then—dangling upside down from ropes—they began to spin like one of those rides at the fair that swings you in circles… I was having trouble describing the thing I was thinking of when I was writing this, so here’s a gif to help you visualize:

At this point, our jaws had dropped. “WTF is happening” laughed to each other. At this point, each of the four men spinning around the pole produced musical instruments and began to play. There was a traditional leather drum and some sort of Mesoamerican fife that were played together. And slowly, they let more and more slack into their ropes, until they were spinning with their heads just a few feet from the ground. And then, they dismounted just as unceremoniously as they had began. At that point, a 5th man in identical clothing made the rounds with an empty, out-turned hat to collect tips. We threw them a few pesos. Well deserved.

Later, when I finally got around to writing this article, I learned that what we had witnessed is called Danza de los Voladores (Dance of the Flyers). It’s an ancient Mesoamerican ritual performed to ask the gods to end a severe drought. Today it’s mostly died out, but is still practiced in pockets of Guatemala and Central Mexico, which is where Teotihuacán is located. Here are some pictures:

Entering Teotihuacán

From there, we walked through the gates, into Teotihuacán. There were lots of vendors hustling to sell trinkets, water, and over-priced maps along the way. In this case, for lack any better options, we sprung for the map. It wasn’t the most informational little pamphlet, but it gave us enough to discern which structures and roads were which. The city spans about 8 square miles (20 square km) and contains around 2,000 separate residential structures, as well as various pyramids, plazas, temples, and palaces. The major landmarks here are lined up and down a long, straight road known as the Avenue of the Dead. Those landmarks are called the Pyramid of the Sun, the Pyramid of the Moon, La Ciudadela (“The Citadel”), and the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. If you didn’t know, Quetzalcoatl (Qwet-zul-co-ah-tull) is an ancient Mesoamerican God, usually portrayed as a feathered serpent. There’s a lot of ground to cover here!

We entered Teotihuacán from the south side, starting with La Ciudadela and the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. These are the two most notable landmarks on this side of the city, but they are far from the only structures. The entire place is landscaped on a massive scale, all perfectly square and symmetrical. My immediate observations were that everything felt utterly flat. Under the intense Mexican sun, these structures provided zero shade. There was nowhere to hide except beneath a thick coat of sunscreen.

This side of Teotihuacán was impressive, but we could see clearly off in the distance that there were larger structures waiting for us on the northern side of the city. Here are a few snaps from the southern stretches of Teotihuacán, including La Ciudadela and the Temple of Quetzalcoatl.

Walking north along the Avenue of the Dead, we took a right turn at a sign telling us there was a botanical garden and museum. The botanical garden turned out not to be much to write home about—just a bunch of giant desert plants—but the museum was very interesting! Here are a couple pictures of the Jurassic Park-sized plants in the gardens before we move on:

The museum definitely gave some interesting context to everything we were seeing. For starters there was a massive three-dimensional map to show you the whole layout of the city (or what it had originally been). That was very helpful to see. They had excavated a lot of interesting Mesoamerican stone work from the surrounding ruins, but noted that there was a lot that had likely been lost to the sands of time. Apparently the inhabitants of Teotihuacán had a preference for devising tools out of organic bodily substances such as bone, so much of these materials had long since decomposed and vanished. However, there were quite a number of bone tools that they had found, but the most fascinating thing here by far were the skeletons. Shown below, these skeletons had been moved from their original burial sites but arranged to be exactly as they were found. These sorts of communal graves were apparently common for Teotihuacán. I don’t know where the remains of sacrifice victims ended up, but I believe all of the tombs represented below were from normal Teotihuacán citizens.

From there we found our way back the main causeway (Avenue of the Dead) and continued northward. As we snaked our way back towards this main artery, we could see a massive pile of stone looming in distance over the top of the dry scraggly grass and clusters of green cacti. Walking up the side of this pile of stone was an endless line of people, dwarfed by the sleeping giant beneath their feet. Our over-priced maps informed us that this was the Pyramid of the Sun. The closer we got to this thing, the more daunting its size became. Meanwhile, down on Avenue of the Dead, we found ourselves navigating a bit of an obstacle course of ancient Mesoamerican landscaping. Almost nothing was in the same plane, so it was difficult to avoid the small but endless flights of stairs along the way. There were a treasure trove of ruinous nooks and crannies to explore along the way, but under the beating sunlight we elected to keep moving. There was still lots to see.

As can be expected in any major tourist attraction in the developing world, there was no shortage of people trying to sell small trinkets to the visitors that walked by. The same was true at Angkor Wat, the Taj Mahal, Valle de Viñales, the list goes on. Except here, one of the main trinkets that was being sold was a sort of jaguar-shaped whistle that, when blown into, let out a loud shriek that somehow sounded exactly like a jaguar or a panther snarling loudly. These people scared the SHIT out of me with these things a couple times. I was not amused.

Eventually we found ourselves at the base of the Pyramid of the Sun. These stairs turned out to be a lot steeper than they had looked from far away. Thankfully, a series of chains had been installed to serve a hand rails for steep ascent. However, even with the chains, the climb was still not a comfortable one. We jumped into the flow of visitors and quickly found ourselves winded and sweaty as we pitted ourselves against this diabolical stair-master / hot yoga crossover. We weren’t exactly moving a slow pace, but this was definitely one of those experiences that makes you look inward and say “damn when did my cardio fall off?”

When we finally reached the top of this thing, we could see for miles in all directions, off to the mountains that encircled us. There wasn’t much at the top of this thing. There was a slight upward curvature of the bricks up here; it didn’t go up much higher in elevation than where the stairs ended, but that didn’t stop people from tripping over each other to reach the highest point. Here are some shots from the hike up to the top.

Time for a nerd reference. Walking around, I was reminded of a computer game I played as a kid called Beyond Atlantis. This is truly a deep cut for late 80’s/early 90’s kids like me, but I’m willing to bet that anybody who did happen to play this game when they were young had quite an impression made on them. That game was magical and there was a particularly captivating level that was set in an ancient Mesoamerican society that looked a lot like this. I was almost getting déjà vu of this virtual world as I walked around Teotihuacán, which, I recognize, is backwards. If you’re interested, here’s a video of what that level looked like: LINK.

Finally, it was time for us to head over to the last major landmark in Teotihuacán: The Pyramid of the Moon. Doesn’t this city have the fucking coolest names for things? Avenue of the Dead. Pyramid of the Moon.

Also, although The Pyramid of the Moon was positioned, from an urban planning perspective, “at the head of the table” (so to speak), it was not nearly as large as the Pyramid of the Sun. It was substantially smaller, but somehow seemed to have a certain dignity about it. Its stairs were the steepest that we had experienced thus far, but it was a short climb. And despite its modest stature, the view here somehow felt more complete. From here, perched high above the start of Avenue of the Dead, we could see straight out over all the action. Here are some pictures.

I’ll be honest. When I was actually here, I didn’t know 80% of the history that I’ve now explained to you in this article. That’s the beauty of this website for me: it forces me to learn. When I was actually here, I was just taking in the information and trying not melt under the hot Mexican sun. However, after we had completed the longest Uber ride of my life, back into Mexico City (2 and a half hours 😬), we cooled off, and from the comfortable ambience of a coffee shop back in Condesa, we began Googling this place. The more we read, the more excited we got. Our back and forth when something like this…

“WTF dude! It says here that the Aztecs ‘discovered’ this place when it was already in ruins? How is that possible?!”

“…are you serious? Is that real?”

We talked a lot about Native American cultures coming out of this place. There were lots of fascinating elements at play in these cultures. To say that it’s a shame that these cultures were all but extinguished by the conquistadors and the settlers of the “New World” is a huge understatement. It’s a tragedy. It’s unforgivable. And worst of all, it cannot be undone.

We tend to use the term “Native American” as a catch-all term, but this was not a monolith. There were all sorts of different nations, cultures, and languages at play all throughout the pre-Colombian Americas, so I don’t want to paint with overly broad brushstrokes…BUT I think we can still learn a lot from these cultures as a whole. One really cool cultural quirk of Native American that we discussed at length after visiting Teotihuacán was gender. In some Native American societies, there were 5 genders. There were men, women, two-spirit men, two-spirit women, and transgender. The term “Two Spirit” in its native tongue(s) was not directly translatable to English, but it means something like “women who feel like men” or visa versa. It was used to refer to people who embodied elements of both the male and female genders. In other words, these terms were the Native American equivalent of the terminology we employ to talk about the LGBTQ+ community today. Except, in Native American cultures, being a Two Spirt was never something to be ashamed of, but was in fact revered as a sign of wisdom and empathy, among other things. Furthermore, many of these societies would have their children dress in gender-neutral clothing until they were old enough to identify as one gender or another.

And when you think about this system today in the context of modern society… it actually makes a lot of sense. Like, so much fucking sense! Is it too late for us to adopt this?

The Spanish actively worked to make sure knowledge of these practices never found its way back to Spain, and quickly began forcing Native Americans to conform to the western 2-gender system. And the rest is history, unfortunately. There was a piece that Bourdain did on one of these Latin American countries where he saw an ancient Mesoamerican statue depicting a naked person, and remarked to the camera “This was from before the Spanish came, and taught them shame.” That pretty much sums things up! I miss Bourdain a lot. He got it.

If you want to learn more about this whole Two Spirit thing, here’s some extra reading for you. There’s a lot to chew on there.

In the next article, we’ll still be in Mexico, but we’ll return to the present day. 🌆