The mystery surrounding the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Mexico continues to unfold after archaeologists found a hidden tunnel beneath the Pyramid of the Moon that they believe was built to represent the “passage to the underworld.”
Over 2000 years ago in 300 BC, Mesoamerican peoples began to develop larger settlements and built this great city that had once been home to more than 125,000 inhabitants, making it the sixth-largest city in the world at the time.
Panoramic view of Teotihuacan. Image via Wikimedia.
“It was the largest city anywhere in the Western Hemisphere before the 1400s,” Arizona State University archaeologist Robert Cowgill told National Geographic. “It had thousands of residential compounds and scores of pyramid-temples comparable to the largest pyramids of Egypt.”
Indeed, along the famed Avenue of the Dead one can find the Pyramid of the Sun, which is the largest structure in Teotihuacan and the Pyramid of the Moon, the second-largest located at the end of the road.
Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan as seen from the Pyramid of the Moon. Image via Wikimedia.
We don’t know who built the city exactly. The city predates the Aztec culture by 1,000 years, but there is evidence that many different peoples, including Mayans, lived in the city and influenced the architecture that has made it famous around the globe and now hosts millions of tourists every year.
Even the true name of the city remains unknown since it was the Aztecs who gave it the name we know today that means “birthplace of the gods”, while Mayan hieroglyphic texts identify it as puh, meaning “Place of Reeds.”
Example of Mayan hieroglyphs, which identify Teotihuacan as “puh”. Image via Wikimedia.
By the time the Aztecs moved in, the city had already been abandoned and lay in ruins, and archaeologists have been investigating Teotihuacan’s downfall for decades, offering several theories.
Some say the city was invaded and sacked by a foreign enemy. But there is evidence that an internal uprising caused by an ecological disaster resulted in a population decline and an overthrowing of the ruling class.
Because many structures showed evidence of being burned, researchers understandably concluded that a rival civilization attacked the city. The problem is that only structures belonging to the ruling class were burned, which indicates an internal revolt. But why did the population rise up against the ruling class?
It turns out that a famine during major droughts caused by a climate change in 535-536 AD could have been the cause. The city relied overwhelmingly on agriculture for food, growing everything from tomatoes, maize, beans, pumpkins and more, but once the droughts kicked in, the food supply started to dwindle and there was not enough food for the large population. A reason for this sudden climate change may have been the 535 AD eruption of the Ilopango volcano in El Salvador. After all, the volcano resulted in several Mayan cities being wiped out or abandoned, why not Teotihuacan?
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