46 Fun Facts About Teotihuacan

The ruins of Teotihuacan lie within 50 km of which modern metropolis?

Mexico City. Close as it is to the old Aztec heartland, Teotihuacan was no Aztec creation: it had stood empty for centuries before they first saw it.

The Aztec name Teotihuacan is usually glossed as what?

Birthplace of the gods. The Aztecs coined the name centuries after the city emptied; what its own people called it has never been recovered.

Who built Teotihuacan?

An unknown people. Even their language is lost; the Aztecs only found the ruins centuries later, and the Toltecs once credited with the city rose long after it fell.

Why did the Aztecs call Teotihuacan's main street the Avenue of the Dead?

They took its platforms for tombs. The mounds lining the avenue were really the bases of temples and palaces, so the name records an Aztec mistake, not a cemetery.

What did Teotihuacan's planners do to the San Juan River where it crossed their city?

Rerouted it through stone canals. The river was bent to run with the streets and pass beneath the main avenue, a sign of how tightly the whole city was planned.

Teotihuacan's main avenue points straight at what?

A sacred mountain. The avenue, tilted about 15 degrees east of north, aims at the peak of Cerro Gordo, and the builders set the Pyramid of the Moon at its far end, in line with it.

What did archaeologists tunnelling into the Pyramid of the Moon find at its core?

Smaller, older versions of itself. Each enlargement swallowed the last, and buried within them were offerings that included sacrificed people and animals.

What happened at Teotihuacan after fire gutted its centre?

People went on living there. The flames took the temples and palaces along the main avenue, but families stayed on among the ruins for generations before drifting away.

The fire that ruined Teotihuacan struck mainly temples and elite compounds, which many scholars read as what?

A revolt from within. No trace of foreign attackers has been found, while statues inside the palaces were deliberately smashed, as if the city's own people had turned on its rulers.

What disaster is thought to have driven refugees from Cuicuilco to swell early Teotihuacan?

A volcanic eruption. It is thought to have wrecked the rival city, and those who fled north may have helped turn Teotihuacan from a small settlement into a metropolis.

What was Teotihuacan's most important industry and main source of wealth?

Obsidian working. The city controlled the mines at nearby Pachuca and turned the volcanic glass into blades and dart points that were traded across Mesoamerica.

Which grisly item turned up among the offerings in the tunnel beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent?

Fragments of human skin. They lay among some 75,000 objects, from jaguar bones and balls of amber to necklaces with the string intact, all set down deliberately as offerings.

The architectural style of a sloping wall topped by a rectangular panel, closely associated with Teotihuacan, is called what?

Talud-tablero. Builders across Mesoamerica copied the look, and versions of it turn up on temples in Maya cities hundreds of miles to the south-east.

At their zenith, the main structures of Teotihuacan were painted in what colour?

Dark red. Only scattered patches of the paint survive, so the bare stone gives little idea of the city its builders saw.

In what state were ten of the twelve people found buried in a vault in the Pyramid of the Moon?

Beheaded. Their hands had been bound behind their backs and the bodies thrown into the vault, while the two others in the same grave were laid out in rich ornaments.

What does Teotihuacan's most important deity seem to have been?

A goddess. Scholars call her the Great Goddess and she appears in murals giving out water and maize, though some now doubt that the images all show a single deity.

The chief deity in Teotihuacan's murals wears a fanged mouth mask like the jaws of which creature?

A spider. Spiders also appear among the plants painted above the figure, which is why scholars have nicknamed the deity for them.

What did 1980s digs uncover beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent?

More than a hundred sacrificial victims. Many were young men buried in groups with their hands tied behind their backs, an offering made when the temple was built.

The Temple of the Feathered Serpent sits inside which walled enclosure at the southern end of the Avenue of the Dead?

The Ciudadela. The Spanish named it 'the citadel', mistaking the great enclosure for a fort; it was really a ceremonial plaza that could hold tens of thousands of people.

What did later builders do to the carved front of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent?

Hid it behind a new platform. The addition went up in the fourth century, and some scholars read it as a snub to the rulers the temple had glorified.

In 378 CE, a warlord tied to Teotihuacan replaced the king of which great Maya city?

Tikal. It lay hundreds of miles away in the Maya lowlands, and the newcomer, whose Maya name means 'born of fire', installed a new ruling line there.

Which insect's wings were found packed in a box among the tunnel offerings at Teotihuacan?

Beetle. Even wings this fragile lasted some 1,800 years underground, still lying in the box where they had been set down as an offering.

Which prized bean reached Teotihuacan along trade routes from groves near the Gulf of Mexico?

Cacao. It was one of the luxuries that flowed in along Teotihuacan's trade routes, while the city's finely decorated pottery travelled out the other way.

The huge Great Compound on Teotihuacan's main avenue is thought to have been the city's what?

Central marketplace. Cotton, salt and bright tropical feathers all passed through the city, and a market this size is one reason scholars call Teotihuacan a true state.

Which status did Teotihuacan gain in 1987?

World Heritage Site. UNESCO's title has not kept development at bay: roads, shops, five towns and even a military base press in on the protected ruins.

The Pyramid of the Sun was hurriedly restored in 1905–10 in time for which national anniversary?

A century of independence. The rush showed: the man in charge stripped many facing stones and added a terrace the pyramid never had, work now judged flawed.

The tunnel found under the Pyramid of the Sun in 1971 ends in a chamber shaped like what?

A four-leaf clover. Looters had emptied its four lobes in antiquity, so nobody can say whether the chamber under the pyramid's heart was a tomb or a shrine.

How was the tunnel beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent discovered in 2003?

A sinkhole opened after heavy rain. Archaeologist Sergio Gómez had himself lowered into the hole on a rope and found he was standing in a man-made tunnel nobody knew existed.

The robot used to explore the tunnel beneath the Feathered Serpent temple was named after which rain god?

Tlaloc. The little robot, Tláloc II, crawled where no person had been for about 1,800 years and sent back the first pictures of the chambers at the tunnel's end.

What do archaeologists think the glittering tunnel beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent was built to represent?

The underworld. Its builders pressed glittering pyrite into the rock so that the dark passage shone like a night sky, a realm of the dead beneath the world of the living.

In the tunnel under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, what did the builders use to stand for water?

Liquid mercury. Its discoverer reads the silvery pools as symbolic water, and mercury was tied to the supernatural across ancient Mesoamerica.

Which retail giant built a store near Teotihuacan's pyramids in 2004 despite protests?

Walmart. Local traders joined the protests and ancient pottery turned up in the soil dug from the plot, yet the store was trading before the year was out.

Teotihuacan's residents lived mostly in what kind of housing?

Multi-family apartment compounds. Even ordinary craftworkers lived in these walled, single-storey blocks, about 2,000 in all, and many had workshops inside.

The neighbourhood of Tlailotlacan housed migrants chiefly from which region, identified by Zapotec-style artefacts and a tomb with an antechamber?

Oaxaca. The Zapotec quarter was one of several foreign enclaves, which is why one Mexican official likens the city to Manhattan, with its Chinatown and Spanish Harlem.

Before digging, how did Sergio Gómez's team trace the full length of the hidden tunnel at Teotihuacan?

With ground-penetrating radar. Scanning the ground above, the team mapped a passage running some 100 metres to the heart of the temple, then spent years planning before they could dig.

What did Teotihuacan's builders do to the Feathered Serpent tunnel about 1,800 years ago?

Sealed it with huge stones. The closure kept looters out, which is why its offerings were found intact, unlike the emptied chamber under the Pyramid of the Sun.

Teotihuacan's own glyph writing seems to have been used mainly to record what?

Dates and names. The surviving examples look far simpler than the script of the Maya, who were carving whole histories of their kings at the same time, and it has never been fully read.

Which two animals, among others, were found buried alive or caged as sacred offerings in the pyramids?

Cougars and eagles. Such hunters stood for warriors, and some were caged or buried alive beside human victims in the offerings inside the Pyramid of the Moon.

Teotihuacan's craftsmen are famous for face masks made mainly of what?

Green stone with mosaic inlay. Eyes were picked out in shell and obsidian, and the masks were probably fastened to statues or funeral bundles rather than worn by the living.

What did René Millon's 1960s project produce for Teotihuacan for the first time?

A complete map of the city. The survey showed streets and housing blocks spreading over about 20 square km, far beyond the pyramids that visitors come to see.

What is thought to have become of Teotihuacan's last residents?

They merged into neighbouring peoples. Many probably followed the old trade routes back to the homelands their families had come from, leaving treasures and bones in the empty buildings.

What is carved alongside the serpent heads on the Temple of the Feathered Serpent?

Seashells. Some scholars read them, together with carved waves, as the watery void from which the world was born: a creation story told in stone.

The Feathered Serpent deity worshipped at Teotihuacan was later known to the Aztecs by what name?

Quetzalcoatl. The cult long outlived the city: more than a thousand years after Teotihuacan carved the plumed snake on its temple, the Aztecs were still honouring him.

Which pyramid in Mexico is the largest in the world by volume?

The Great Pyramid of Cholula. Its volume is nearly double that of Egypt's Great Pyramid, though it is far lower, and a Spanish church has stood on its summit since colonial times.

Long after Teotihuacan fell, what regularly brought the Aztecs back to its ruins?

Pilgrimage. The Aztecs revered the dead city as a holy place, which is why it was never truly lost and why its best-known names, from the pyramids to the main avenue, are theirs.

On what pattern was the whole city of Teotihuacan laid out?

A rectangular grid. Its alignment tracks sunrises and sunsets on set dates, so the streets themselves worked as a kind of calendar.