Teotihuacan, the Pyramid of the Moon and the Street of the Dead September 28, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Destination, Egypt, Geographic, Guatemala, Hotels, Map, Mexico, Museum, Round The World, San Juan, Tickets, Tour, Travelling Bag, Trip , trackbackThis great and urban and religious centre, 30 miles (48km) northeast of modern Mexico City, was given its present name by the
Aztecs who encountered its awesome ruins. In Nahuatl, the language the Aztecs spoke, Teotihuacan means ‘place of the gods’, or, ‘the place of the creation of the gods’. This great site, dominated by two pyramids, was ‘regarded by the Aztec as the original source of civilization and government, and the place where cosmic order was established.” In Aztec myth, Teotihuacan was where Nanahuatzin, a dying god, jumped into a ceremonial fire which the four creator gods (representing the Four Directions) were too fearful to enter. Thus turned to flame, Nanahuatzin became the ‘Fifth Sun‘ — the Aztec sun of the present cosmic age. His companion, Tecciztecatl, joined him in the sacrificial fire and became the moon. The Aztecs thus decided that the two pyramids were dedicated to the sun and moon respectively. The Fifth Sun agreed to orient the world by his risings and to organize the passage of time. This legend clearly is a narrative mnemonic for orientation and astronomy, for geomancy, and Teotihuacan is certainly a place where this is demonstrated.
No one knows who the Teotihuacanos were, but they occupied the Valley of Mexico well over a millenium prior to the Aztecs, and even before the Toltecs. Teotihuacan began to be laid out in the first century AD, and at its height (AD 300-650) it had a population of up to 200,000 and extended to around 10 square miles (2,590ha). It was made up of temples, shrines, plazas, dwellings and workshops, was ruled by a priestly elite, and was both a sacred and an economic centre. The influence of this city, the largest in its day in the western hemisphere, spread over vast distances, even as far north as Cahokia or beyond, according to Joseph Campbell. It was burned and abandoned in the eighth century.
The city plan was laid out on a four-fold division scheme, but it was not aligned to the cardinal points. The whole layout is skewed 15′/z degrees east of north. It took archaeologists and astronomers some time to understand what this odd orientation was all about.
The effective omphalos of the place is the Pyramid of the Sun, which rises well over 200 feet (60m) in tiers, and is composed of 35 million cubic feet (990,500 cubic m) of material. It faces westerly towards Cerro Colorado, though E. C. Krupp states that it actually aligns to Cerro Maravillas, 41/2 miles (7km) distant. Either or both may well have been sacred hills to the Teotihuacanos. But the researcherssought a primarily astronomical answer for the curious angle of orientation that the city planners adhered to so rigorously that not only were streets and structures kept to the established axial plan, but even the course of the San Juan River at the site was canalized to conform to it. The skewed north—south central axis is marked by the Street of the Dead, and the Pyramid of the Sun is set just to the east of this with its sides oriented appropiately. The Street of the Dead is about 11/2 miles (2.4km) long and aligns to the Pyramid of the Moon at its northerly end. It is really a series of plazas, flanked by platforms and multi-roomed structures which opened out onto it, and was probably a ceremonial way. It ultimately aligns to Cerro Gordo, a major source of the city’s water and thus also probably considered holy. But no astronomical target could be identified in the east of north orientation.
The answer came from the study of the other axis. This is believed to intersect the northerly— southerly axis a short distance to the south of the Pyramid of the Sun at a point marked by a `pecked cross’. This feature is in the plaster floor of a ruin complex archaeologists call the Viking Group, on the eastern edge of the Street of the Dead. It measures about a yard (1m) across, and consists of two concentric rings of pecked holes, quartered by two pecked lines crossing at the circles’ common centre. Another such circular motif, containing a similar number of pecked holes, was found 2 miles (3.2km) westwards on a boulder on Cerro Colorado. Archaeologists suspect that these symbols are benchmarks left by the early surveyors. Some 70 similar pecked designs occur in ruins from Guatemala to northern Mexico. (These features probably had ritual use as well, as we know the ancients worldwide could combine spirituality and pragmatism at the same place.) The northeast axis seems to have been a perpendicular struck from the line linking the two pecked crosses, which, archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni verified, aligned to the setting point of the Pleiades in AD 150. At the latitude of Teotihuacan the sun passes directly overhead on two days each year. At noon on those days no shadow is cast and the sun god was said to descend to the Earth briefly. In AD 150 the first annual pre-dawn appearance of the Pleiades heralded the first day of the zenith sun. These conspicuous stars seem to have had great importance not only in ancient Mesoamerica but, indeed, ‘are recognized by nearly everyone as something special. Worldwide, they are seasonal heralds.”
So the orientation of Teotihuacan seems ultimately to stem from an astronomical connection with the Pleiades. But the geomancy goes literally deeper than this. In 1971, a heavy rainstorm caused a depression to appear in front of the Pyramid of the Sun. On investigation, ancient steps were revealed descending into a natural cave beneath the pyramid. It is a four-lobed cave with a lava tube extension. Archaeoastronomer John B. Carlson described it as ’something like a four-leaf clover with its stem lying flat’.’ Archaeologist Doris Heyden suggested that the four lobes corresponded to the four-fold cosmos of the Teotihuacanos, with the stem indicating by extraordinary coincidence what was later confirmed as the Pleiades setting point. The Teotihuacanos embellished the cave, and it was clearly a sacred shrine, for many ancient Mesoamericans considered that their final ancestors had emerged from caverns within the Earth. It was also, perhaps, where shamanic initation was conducted. The Pyramid of the Sun and the axial plan of the city seem to have evolved from this holy spot.
It seems, therefore, that the axial arrangement of Teotihuacan echoes both subterranean and celestial configurations at the site. A marriage of heaven and earth.
The cardinal directions are also clearly indicated at Teotihuacan, however, for the Pyramid of the Sun lies due south from the city’s other great monument, the Pyramid of the Moon (which had a well penetrating its structure). This alignment extends beyond the southern pyramid to ‘pyramid-shaped Cerro Patlachique’ visible on the skyline.’
It has been suggested that all major solar, and possibly lunar, events are accommodated by alignments extending from the central complex out to other temples and pyramids lying within a 11/4 miles (2km) radius.
At the southern end of the Street of the Dead is a complex called The Citadel, which also marks the course of the main ‘east—west’ thoroughfare. Within this ritual plaza is a seven- tiered pyramid covered with carvings depicting Quetzalcoatl, the classic expression of the plumed serpent archetype. American engineer Hugh Harleston claims that the dimensions of the steps on this structure provide a mathematical basis for a mercator-like projection of the earth.’ If this is so, then it means the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl encodes geodetic information.
Taking Teotihuacan as a whole, the sky and topography were welded into a classic geomantic expression. ‘Locked within the city’s monuments, avenues, and relationships to outlying sites seems to be a complex system of associations,’ Krupp observes. ‘The order is there.”
Any possible energy aspects of Teotihuacan are uninvestigated, but David Zink notes that:
In 1906 an archaeologist . . . found a thick sheet of mica covering the top of the fifth level of the pyramid [of the Sun]; this material was lost in the reconstruction. Its presence suggests that perhaps some now unknown energy property of this pyramid may once have been utilized by the priests .. . it would be based, of course, on the electrical insulating properties of mica . . .8
A structure like a pyramid is a notable collector of atmospheric electricity, as has been noted at Egypt’s Giza Pyramid. The enormous statues which originally adorned the summits of both main pyramids may have been, effectively, instruments in some elemental technology, a technology perhaps echoed in more primitive form at Cahokia.
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