50 free Teotihuacan trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Teotihuacan trivia quiz covers the largest city of the pre-Columbian Americas, forty kilometres from Mexico City. The easy questions are the ones any visitor knows: what the Aztec name means, which two great pyramids dominate the site, what the main street is called, roughly when the city flourished and the fact that the Aztecs did not build it. From there it moves into the population estimates, the apartment compounds, the murals, the talud-tablero style, the green Pachuca obsidian that made the city rich, and the puzzling absence of kings, palaces and writing. The hard end covers what archaeologists have pieced together: the sacrificed warriors under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, the 378 coup at Tikal and Spearthrower Owl, the burning of the elite core around 550 and the 535-536 climate crisis, Leopoldo Batres's flawed 1910 restoration, the tunnel found under the Pyramid of the Sun in 1971, and Sergio Gómez Chávez's rain-opened sinkhole that led to a sealed tunnel full of pyrite spheres and pools of liquid mercury. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city, its pyramids, temples, gods and excavators, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Teotihuacan lies roughly how far northeast of modern Mexico City?
40 km
It sits in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, in the State of Mexico.
Q 02The name Teotihuacan, given by the Aztecs centuries after the city fell, is usually glossed as what?
Birthplace of the gods
Nahua creation myths placed the making of the universe at the site; the city's original name is unknown.
Q 03Who built Teotihuacan?
Builders whose identity is unknown
It was already in ruins when the Aztecs arrived; colonial texts wrongly credited the Toltecs, who came later.
Q 04At its height, around 1-500 CE, Teotihuacan's population most likely sat around what figure?
100,000
That may have made it the sixth-largest city in the world at the time; some estimates run as high as 250,000.
Q 05Along with the Nahua, which two peoples are the leading candidates for the city's main ethnic group?
Otomi and Totonac
Many scholars think the city was multi-ethnic, with migrants arriving from across Mesoamerica.
Q 06During its classical Period III, the city contained roughly how many buildings within 18 square kilometres?
2,000
It held about half of all people in the Valley of Mexico, a kind of primate city of Mesoamerica.
Q 07How tall is the Pyramid of the Sun?
75 metres
It is 225 metres across but just over half the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Q 08The Pyramid of the Moon mimics the contours of which mountain to the north of the city?
Cerro Gordo
The mountain may have been called Tenan, "mother or protective stone" in Nahuatl.
Q 09How tall is the Pyramid of the Moon?
43 metres
Its base measures about 147 by 130 metres; it was used as a stage for human and animal sacrifice.
Q 10The city was established around 100 BCE. When were its major monuments sacked and systematically burned?
c. 550 CE
The collapse may be linked to the extreme weather events of 535-536.
Q 11The volcanic eruption blamed for the 535-536 climate crisis that may have brought famine to Teotihuacan was in which country?
El Salvador
The Ilopango eruption is the leading suspect; juvenile skeletons from the 6th century show rising malnutrition.
Q 12More recent evidence suggests the burning of the city was limited to what?
Structures associated with the ruling class
That points to an internal uprising rather than foreign invasion; no traces of invaders have been found.
Q 13Which nearby city, on the southern shore of Lake Texcoco, was devastated by the Xitle volcano, likely sending refugees to swell Teotihuacan?
Cuicuilco
Q 21The city's primary female deity was first identified from murals found in the years before 1942 in which residential compound?
Tepantitla
Peter Furst proposed in 1974 that the figure was female; Esther Pasztory saw a fertility goddess ancestral to Xochiquetzal.
Q 22What did archaeologists discover beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in the 1980s?
More than a hundred sacrificial victims
The burials, like the structure, date to between 150 and 200 CE.
Q 23The Temple of the Feathered Serpent sits inside which walled enclosure at the southern end of the Avenue of the Dead?
The Ciudadela
An earlier eruption of Popocatépetl had already begun degrading its farmland.
Q 14What is strikingly absent from Teotihuacan compared with Maya, Zapotec and Olmec cities?
Any evidence of a king or single ruler
No royal palaces, ball courts or captive-humiliation scenes have been found, leading many scholars to propose collective governance.
Q 15What was Teotihuacan's most important industry and main source of wealth?
Obsidian working
The state monopolised the trade, and its tools have been found from Monte Albán to Tikal.
Q 16Teotihuacan's prized green obsidian came mainly from mines near which town?
Pachuca
A scraper of Pachuca obsidian has turned up as far away as Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma.
Q 17The architectural style of a sloping wall topped by a rectangular panel, closely associated with Teotihuacan, is called what?
Talud-tablero
Variants appear at Tikal, Copán and Kaminaljuyú, though the style itself originated in the Tlaxcala-Puebla region.
Q 18At their zenith, the main structures of Teotihuacan were painted in what colour?
Dark red
Small patches of the paint survive today.
Q 19Teotihuacan's mural painting, which peaked between 450 and 650, has been compared to that of which European city?
Renaissance Florence
Perhaps tens of thousands of murals were painted; the Wagner Murals ended up in private collections.
Q 20Scholars agree the city's primary deity was a female figure known as what?
The Great Goddess of Teotihuacan
Karl Taube dubbed her the Teotihuacan Spider Woman in 1983.
Its courtyard is big enough to hold the city's entire adult population.
Q 24Around 300 CE the Temple of the Feathered Serpent was desecrated. What does Linda Manzanilla connect this to?
Its faction being expelled, then seizing Tikal in 378
She argues the 378 takeover of Tikal was by a group thrown out of the city, not by the Teotihuacan state.
Q 25Which warlord, whose name means "born of fire", conquered Tikal in January 378 with Teotihuacan imagery, according to Stela 31?
Sihyaj K'ahk'
Tikal lies about 600 miles from Teotihuacan; El Perú and Naachtun supported the takeover.
Q 26Maya inscriptions name a Teotihuacan ruler, dubbed by scholars "Spearthrower Owl", who reigned for how long and installed relatives at Tikal?
Over 60 years
Tikal's Marcador monument records his accession to a throne on 4 May 374 CE.
Q 27In Maya hieroglyphic texts, Teotihuacan appears under what name?
Puh, "Place of Reeds"
That makes it one of several Central Mexican "Tollans", which long confused scholars debating whether it or Tula was the Tollan of the chronicles.
Q 28In 2018 INAH archaeologist Verónica Ortega argued the site was originally called Teohuacan, which means what?
City of the Sun
She suggested Spanish colonisers altered the name in the 16th century.
Q 29Teotihuacan was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which year?
1987
It was Mexico's second most-visited archaeological site in 2024, with 1.3 million visitors.
Q 30Which archaeologist led the major 1905 excavation and the restoration of the Pyramid of the Sun for the 1910 independence centenary?
Leopoldo Batres
His reconstruction of the pyramid is now regarded as flawed.