City in the center of the universe

Original author: Brian Fagan
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Robots and lasers reveal ancient sacred geography




About 48 km from Mexico City in the valley of Mexico City in the abandoned city of Teotihuacan, the Pyramid of the Sun towers . This massive structure with a height of 71 m makes you feel like a speck in the presence of the gods. It is this effect and sought its builders. The inhabitants of Teotihuacan lived in the heart of a huge sacred landscape. The city occupied more than 21 km 2 , making up most of the plains and highlands. By 100 AD At least 80,000 people lived here. From 200 to 750, the population of Teotihuacan increased to 150,000. At that time, it was comparable to the largest cities of China and the Middle East.

Archaeologists have been working here for almost a hundred years. They learned that Teotihuacan was a huge symbolic landscape, which included artificial mountains, foothills, caves and open spaces that reproduced the world of spirits. For more than 800 years, Teotihuacan built 600 pyramids, 500 workshops, a huge market, 2,000 residential complexes and several areas.



At some point, the rulers of the city decided to rebuild a large part of it. They built standard fenced residential complexes, likely to replace crowded city blocks. In some of them lived artisans and were their workshops. Others were military barracks. Newcomers from the Oaxaca Valley and the lowlands of Veracruz on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico lived in separate areas that can be identified by distinctive pottery.

Everything developed according to an orthogonal plan; the streets walked at right angles to each other. In the direction from north to south, the city cut through a wide avenue, known since the time of the Spanish conquests as the “Road of the Dead”.

The Great Pyramids of the Sun and Moon rise at the northern end of the Road. From 150 to 325, the rulers of the city remade the Pyramid of the Sun, giving it its present appearance, increased the Pyramid of the Moon and extended the Road of the Dead more than a kilometer to the south to reach the Citadel - the new political and religious center of the city. Until recently, little was known about this impressive structure. And in 2003, the National Institute of Anthropology and History from Mexico City launched an ambitious and long-term program to research and preserve the temples of the Citadel. The project works to this day, and in recent years several amazing discoveries have been made.

The complex of the Citadel is huge, it includes high walls and a large area. In this limited space for public ceremonies, up to 100,000 people could gather. The temple of Quetzalcoatl , the feathered serpent, the ancient deity of the civilization of Central America, is located inside the fence, facing the square. This is a six-level stepped pyramid, and huge steps go to its top, forming small terraces. Their facades are decorated with the heads of feathered serpents and snake-like creatures, possibly battle snakes. Reliefs with a feathery serpent are also under each row of heads, next to the image of water. The temple was painted blue and decorated with carved shells. It is not known what the color, heads and other decorations meant, but it seems likely that they represented the universe (the universe) at the time of its creation - a calm ocean.

The excavators started from scratch, worked with a badly damaged temple - it partially suffered from rain and groundwater, and partly from a huge number of tourists. In 2004, the World Monuments Foundation provided financial and technical support for the conservation of this unique structure.

Excavations of Mexican archaeologists in a large area near the Quetzalcoatl temple revealed the remains of several buildings that, by 200 AD were built on the place where farmlands were before them. They formed the first religious complex. One of the buildings was more than 120 meters long and could serve as a court for ceremonial ball games (an ancient ritual, which may have included the sacrifice of the losers). The architects of the Quetzalcoatl temple demolished these buildings, erecting the Citadel in its present condition.

The open space in front of the temple in the Citadel had to be filled with water to form a reflective surface. It was something like a “water mirror”, a symbolic display of a calm sea that existed before the creation of the world and people. According to ancient myths about the origin, the Sacred Mountain rose from the water mass at the beginning of time. All this indicates that the Citadel was the venue for rituals, in which scenes from the creation myths were played.

The heavy rains of 2003 opened a depression and a deep hole in the ground in front of the steps of the Quetzalcoatl temple platform. After many years of work, archaeologists first fell into the dungeon of the temple. One of them - Sergio Gomez Chavez - was lowered on a rope through a small passage. He reached the ground at a depth of almost 14 meters and found an underground tunnel leading east to the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, and to the west, towards the center of a large area. For the most part, the tunnel was filled with earth and stone-carved blocks placed there by Teotihuacans.

To clear and study the underground passage, careful planning was required. In 2004, 2005 and 2010, before going underground, Chavez and his colleagues used a radar, the rays of which penetrate through the soil to build a map of the aisle, being on the surface of the earth. From it came out that the length of the tunnel is from 100 to 120 m, and its eastern end is located in the center of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. Measurements made using radar indicated the presence of a large room in the middle of the tunnel, and even more at the eastern end. They also provided the possibility of planning underground exploration.


The “Tlaloque 1” robot was designed to explore the tunnels under the Teotihuacan pyramids.

The investigation was based on a series of carefully thought-out assumptions. To begin with, the researchers suggested that Teotihuacan is a copy of the idea of ​​its inhabitants about the universe, three levels of which were created by the gods - heaven, earth and hell. The horizontal plane represented the north, east, south and west. The angles of the plane were the corners of the world.

Secondly, the excavators suggested that the Temple of the Feathered Serpent symbolized the Sacred Mountain of creation, which was thought to have emerged from the calm sea at the beginning of time. The temple stood in a sacred place, in the center of the world. And there it was possible to communicate with different levels of the universe.

Third, they suggested that the sacred cave, which was believed to be under the Sacred Mountain, was the entry point to hell. There were gods and creative forces that supported the existence of the universe. The tunnel, which Chavez partially explored using radar, was a symbolic representation of the underworld. According to ancient cosmology (the study of the universe), hell had its own sacred geography.

Finally, they suggested that the underground passage was often visited, but only by the persons involved in the rituals, which fueled their power. It was here that such people received spiritual abilities by conducting rituals. In the tunnel may be some objects that participated in the rituals, or even the remains of those who gave and received gifts.

Underground excavation began in 2006, and continues to this day. Chavez began with an area of ​​about 100 m 2 , where, he believed, there once was the main entrance to the tunnel. Two meters below the surface was a pit with an area of ​​about 5 m 2 . She provided access to the tunnel leading to the pyramid.

The narrow passage was filled with artifacts and stone blocks, and because of this, planning the excavation was difficult. Chavez again took up the instruments for remote research, this time already underground. This time he used a laser scanner - a high-precision measuring device - to plan the next phase of work. At the first approach, 37 meters of the tunnel length were recorded. Another scan in 2011 showed already 73 meters. These measurements confirmed that there is indeed a long tunnel under the ground leading to the pyramid, but its exact total length remained unknown.

Then Chavez used a small remote-controlled robot equipped with video cameras. He walked 37 meters of the tunnel, checking its stability and potential working conditions. This helped to excavate the previous segment, measured by a laser. In 2013, a more sophisticated robot with an infrared camera and a miniature laser scanner passed through the last 30 meters of the tunnel, previously inaccessible. The task was not easy. The ancient Aztecs visited the tunnel quite often, and left offerings there. To do this, they had to wade, and sometimes partially destroy, more than 20 thick partitions that blocked the passage. As a result, the entire tunnel space was filled with offerings. Chavez and his colleagues were the first people to enter this tunnel in the last 1800 years.

By 2013, the excavation of the tunnel had already passed 65 meters. Two side rooms were found. Their walls and ceiling were trimmed with powder obtained from a metal-containing mineral, and they glittered like a starry sky or flowing water. In one room were more than 400 balls of metal-containing mineral. These objects remain a mystery. After two rooms, the depth of the tunnel gradually increased and it continued 35 meters to the east. At the end there were three rooms facing north, south and east.

More than 75,000 objects were excavated during the exploration of the tunnel, which now extends to 103 meters in length and 17 meters in depth. Thousands of offerings have been extracted: among them are minerals such as jade, serpentine and turquoise, obsidian (volcanic glass) and mercury. Hundreds of earthen vessels and mirrors made from polished pyrite (a brilliant mineral often confused with gold) lay there next to the shells. Dozens of unusual clay vessels, rubber balls, necklaces, wood products, fragments of human skin were discovered.

What do all these finds mean? Chavez and his colleagues believe that the Citadel recreated the sacred geography of the universe and the work of the gods. The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent symbolized the Sacred Mountain, which served as a link between various levels and regions of the universe. The underground tunnel and caves under the temple turned the earthly place into a damp, cold, and dark hell. It was there that the rulers received supernatural power that allowed them to rule. The tunnel under the pyramid conducted the rulers of the city in the underworld. Disappearing underground, they demonstrated that they were able to visit this unknown world — and this action gave them the ability to communicate with the forces of the supernatural world. In the Citadel, all residents of the great city participated in public ceremonies that marked the main events of the ritual calendar.

The ongoing research project of the Citadel is not a fussy search for valuable objects, but a systematic, rigorous analysis of the value of objects found in the tunnel. Everything had a ritual significance - including the fact that the entrance to the tunnel was dug under the water table to recreate the humid surroundings of the underworld. The last 30 meters of the tunnel were made even deeper, so that they were always filled with water, and represented the sacred water of creation.

Research in Teotihuacan began a hundred years ago, but the city is so large that they revealed only a small part of all the secrets. Now the focus is on studying tunnels - not only in the Citadel, but also under the pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. These tunnels and rich offerings, as well as sacrifices of rituals, will help to decipher the complex symbolism of one of the greatest cities in history.

Brian Fagan is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, author of the books Fish on Friday, The Little Ice Age, The Long Summer, and the New York Times best-selling book The Great Warming. An excerpt from the book “A Little History of Archeology” [A Little History of Archeology], 2018 is given.

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