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c. 100 BCE - 550 CEReputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Teotihuacan Rises as the Largest City in the Pre-Columbian Americas

A city whose builders' names are lost grows to 200,000 people and raises pyramids the Aztec would later worship as sacred

On the timeline · around c. 100 BCE - 550 CE · Pre-Columbian MesoamericaPre-Columbian MesoamericaTeotihuacan Rises as the Largest City in the Pre-Columbian Americas750 BCE500 BCE250 BCE1 CE250 CE500 CE750 CE1000

Quick facts

Region
Basin of Mexico, northeast of modern Mexico City
Peak population
Up to 200,000 (c. 375-500 CE)
Pyramid of the Sun
215m per side, 60m tall, built c. 100 CE
Decline
Major structures burned c. 600 CE

What happened

Teotihuacan formed in the Basin of Mexico between 150 BCE and 200 CE and grew into the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, reaching a population as high as 200,000 at its height between 375 and 550 CE. Its builders raised the Pyramid of the Sun around 100 CE over a natural cave and spring, a structure 215 meters per side and 60 meters tall, and the smaller Pyramid of the Moon around 150 CE, connected by the 40-meter-wide, 3.2-kilometer Avenue of the Dead. Around 600 CE the city's major buildings were deliberately burned and its religious sculptures smashed, and the identity of the people who built and ran it is still unknown: even the name Teotihuacan is not theirs. It is Nahuatl, given centuries later by the Aztec, and means 'place of the gods.'

Why it matters

The Aztec who arrived in the Basin of Mexico centuries after Teotihuacan's fall found its pyramids already ancient and treated the ruins as the place where the gods created the current era of the world, folding a vanished city into their own religion. Teotihuacan set the template, the pyramid-and-avenue city plan, that later Mesoamerican capitals including Tenochtitlan echoed.

How we know

Excavations at the Pyramid of the Sun found a 100-meter tunnel beneath it leading to a four-chambered space, and dedicatory offerings of obsidian and greenstone carvings recovered from the Pyramid of the Moon date its construction phases; the identity of Teotihuacan's original inhabitants remains an open question because they left no deciphered written language.

Sources

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Part of a timelineHistory of Mexico34 events · From the Olmec's colossal stone heads to a modern republic, told through the conquest that ended one empire and the revolution that remade the nation twiceView all →
Teotihuacan Rises as the Largest City in the Pre-Columbian Americas · History of Mexico · SourcedStory