Teotihuacan was on the agenda for today. It is hard to grasp the size and scope of this development, but I hope these pics and video give some perspective.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Teotihuacan is how little we really know about it. We don’t know it’s name; Teotihuacan is just what the Aztecs called it. It means “city of the gods” since the Aztecs found it abandoned and assumed the gods must have built it. We don’t know who really built it, as it predates the Meso-american societies we have named but is more advanced than the unidentified ones. We know the Aztecs came from Tenochtitlan to hold religious services in Teotihuacan, and we know the conquistadors named one area “the citadel” because they thought it resembled a ready-made fort.
Archaeologists thought Teotihuacan had astronomical associations based on its location and orientation, so they called the largest pyramid the temple of the sun and the next largest the temple of the moon. Once excavated, they determined both were dedicated to Meso-american gods: Tlaloc and some unknown female counterpart. They estimate one-quarter of a million people lived in and around the complex, but we don’t know what happened to them.
The pyramid steps are highly irregular and steep. Most have no handrails; some have a steel cable on which to grab hold. At various levels there are plateaus, where the lines to climb snake back and forth. There are no guardrails. I saw whole families, from grandparents to small children, clambering up the pyramid. From the video, you get a sense of the crowds. There are no signs, no park rangers, no one overseeing safety. Yet I saw no one fall, and everybody seemed to be looking out for everyone else. One way to ensure safety is to make more rules, emplace more equipment, hire more inspectors. Another is to make people responsible for themselves.
As to the title of this post? Well you’ll recall President Obama’s comment that ‘if you own a business, you didn’t build that.’ In the case of the Aztecs and Teotihuacan, it’s true!