Pyramid builders in the pre-Columbian America
Archaeological enigmas are essentially divided into two categories: those that refer to alleged lost knowledge, developed by our ancestors thanks to the ingenuity of individuals or attributed to a contribution of external characters (extraterrestrials, antediluvian technological civilizations etc ...), and those that refer to the as yet unknown history of ancient peoples. In fact, archaeological mysteries do not always have to be understood according to the canons of the so-called space archeology.
Official archeology is already in itself a science in which mysteries abound. And his puzzles are no less fascinating than those in which hypotheses that are sometimes at the limit of the credible are called into question.
The ancient city of Teotihuacan is precisely one of these canonical mysteries, for which the word mystery is used, once in a while without any embarrassment, even by learned academics.
In the shadow of the pyramids
Teotihuacan stands on a large plateau not far from Mexico City, at an altitude of about 2300 meters. Here its builders were spoiled for choice in deciding where to place the buildings, since the plateau is comparable to an immense blank slate. The city, which covers an area of about 23 square kilometers, was nevertheless built in a strategic position, at the meeting point, that is, of important roads and in the place where the Valley of Mexico connects to the Gulf of Mexico. This position favored a flourishing cultural and above all commercial exchange with the neighboring populations and guaranteed for centuries the development of the city which became populous and prosperous.
The visitor who goes to Teotihuacan is immediately impressed by the bulk of the most massive of the monuments present there: the Pyramid of the Sun, built in the first centuries of our era. It is a four-storey building about 73 meters high and the sides of which measure 225 meters. The comparison with the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, which is at least twice as high, arises spontaneously, but it is a comparison that cannot however diminish the importance of the Mexican monument which must have in any case required superhuman efforts from its builders. It is estimated that at least three thousand workers were involved in the construction of the pyramid. Three thousand men for over thirty years of uninterrupted work. More than two and a half million tons of sun-dried bricks were used in the course of the work which naturally also demonstrates profound astronomical and mathematical knowledge, as well as engineering, by the civilization that produced it. The axis of the pyramid is in fact perfectly oriented in an east-west direction, that is in the sense of the passage of the sun in the sky. Most likely this construction symbolizes the center of the universe, with the four corners corresponding to the four cardinal points and with the vertex which would mean the center of life. In the early 1970s, archaeologists discovered a cavity under the pyramid. It is a tunnel a few meters underground that goes east for a hundred meters.
Not far away rises another pyramid, called the Pyramid of the Moon. Built around the second century AD, it is smaller than the previous one (its sides measure 145 meters and its height is 42 meters) although it is equally well preserved and equally impressive.
A very long Avenue extends from the Pyramid of the Moon (about three kilometers). In reality it is a series of courtyards and open spaces, each of which is about a hundred meters wide. On the sides of these courtyards there are low platforms that the Aztecs first and then the Spaniards thought to be burial mounds. In reality both were wrong because the ancient inhabitants of the city had a very particular funerary costume. In fact, they used to cremate the bodies of the dead and bury their ashes under the floor of the houses.
The Avenue of the Dead then crosses what is called the Ciudadela, the citadel. It is a complex of buildings enclosed by a square perimeter with sides more than 600 meters long. La Ciudadela was the ceremonial complex of the city and was located near the Gran Conjunto which was instead the administrative district. In the vicinity of the Ciudadela stands the temple of Quetzalcoatl, the best known monument of this urban center. In this pyramid with six floors or steps, we meet some architectural elements that will later become typical throughout Mesoamerica: the alfardas, or the protective ramps of the building's stairways and the so-called talud-tablero or the interruption of the inclined body of the pyramid (talud) by means of protruding units (tableros).
From an urban point of view, the city was divided into neighborhoods organized along the two long main lines: the Avenue of the Dead and another long road that intersected it about three kilometers from the Ciudadela.
The builders
The main mystery of Teotihuacan concerns its origins. We don't know exactly who founded this city.
Initially it was thought of the Aztec people, but in reality they received the complex as an inheritance from another civilization. When the Aztecs discovered the site, in fact, it had already been in ruins for seven hundred years. However, they did not hesitate to take it and give it a suggestive name: Teotihuacan, precisely, which in the Nauhatl language means the city where the gods are born.
It is very likely that Teotihuacan traded with the other peoples of the Mexican highlands and perhaps even maintained relations of supremacy with them.
What is certain is that its cultural influence was decisive throughout Central America. Vases produced in Teotihuacan between the 2nd and 7th centuries AD have been found throughout Mexico at a time when the city was in full bloom and had more than two hundred thousand inhabitants.
Few other things do we know about the mysterious inhabitants of this metropolis of the ancient world. They possessed a writing, which however has never been deciphered, and it is possible that there was a book production, although no text has ever come down to us. We also know that their numbering system was most likely very similar to that of the Olmecs and was therefore composed of a set of bars and dots.
They were certainly a particularly gifted people from an artistic point of view. Famous are the stone masks found on the spot, made with nephrite, basalt or jade and decorated with shells and obsidian. Obsidian was a highly sought after and valued material in the ancient world. Many clues lead to think that in Teotihuacan there were at least 350 processing points of this mineral that allowed the construction of sharp objects.
Equally mysterious, as often happens in the cities of Central and South America, is the sudden decline of Teotihuacan. Some scholars blame the climate that would have dried up, first causing a decline in the crop and then a terrible famine. The only thing we know is that around 700 the city was set on fire by some barbarian populations from the north who settled there for two hundred years.
