For more than 1,000 years, the city stood empty in the barren, wind-blown valley, 34 miles northeast of where Mexico City now stands. Ever so slowly, its palaces and temples, splendid with brilliant murals and shell-thin pottery, disappeared beneath the sifting earth, until at last only a pair of massive, truncated pyramids and a few mounds remained to mark the city's grave. Even its name was forgotten.
The Aztecs, who came on the pyramids centuries later, called the site Teotihuacán—"the place where men become gods"—and avoided it in awe. Because the pyramids held no gold, the Spaniards were uninterested. Innmodern times, droves of tourists journeyed from Mexico City to climb the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. But, though archaeologists long suspected that there was much more to Teotihuacán (pronounced Tay-o-tee-wah-kan), few spades disturbed the city's deep covering of cactus-grown earth.
Red for Sacrifice. Last year, at the urging of Mexican archaeologists, President Adolfo López Mateos decided to disinter Teotihuacán and make it the cultural capstone of his administration. With a $1,320,000 grant from the government, Jorge Acosta, one of Mexico's top archaeologists, enlisted 550 laborers to start the picks and shovels working. Behind the diggers came a task force of 37 archaeologists and restorers, carefully gathering everything from stone dartheads to obsidian razor blades. By last week, after the months of excavation, even the most optimistic archaeologists realized that they had vastly underestimated the true size and scope of Teotihuacán. Said Acosta: "This is by far the biggest, most wonderful city of pre-Conquest America. It was bigger in area than Athens, bigger than Rome."
In its heyday, Teotihuacán supported a population of about 250,000—roughly twice the size of Kansas City, Kans. It was built in concentric rings, and the core was bisected by a wide avenue that archaeologists have called the Avenue of the Dead. In the center were pyramids and temples, markets and assembly plazas; beyond lay homes and farm lands, spreading out miles from the center. It was a brilliantly colored city, says Acosta, "shining red like blood." Palace and temple exteriors were painted with layer upon layer of lime volcanic powder and natural iron oxide, then buffed to a gleaming finish with green jadeite polishing stones. All streets were paved with a sort of rock-hard red stucco, 4-in. thick.
"If blood ran down the steps, you wouldn't have known it," says Acosta. And blood did flow. Acosta found paintings of human hearts with sacrificial knives lying beside. Other archaeologists have turned up shallow dishes cut from the tops of human skulls, as well as a huge red and yellow bowl containing human thigh-and hipbones—suggesting that the Teotihuacanos may have practiced cannibalism. Teotihuacanos also practiced autosacrifice to Chicome Xochitl, a god of flowers. In this rite the worshiper slashed his own finger or eyelids, allowed the blood to soak into porous paper, which was then burned in small clay bowls.