Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan was the greatest city of ancient Mesoamerica during the Classic period and the centre of a powerful and influential civilisation in the Valley of Mexico.

Developing from around 100 BCE and flourishing especially between about 100 and 650 CE, the city grew into one of the largest urban centres in the world of its time, with a population estimated at well over 100,000 at its height. Its builders laid out a vast, meticulously planned city aligned to a grand central avenue known as the Avenue of the Dead, flanked by monumental architecture including the enormous Pyramid of the Sun, the Pyramid of the Moon, and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent (Quetzalcoatl). The city was a major economic and religious hub, controlling the production and trade of obsidian and other goods, and it housed multi-family apartment compounds, workshops, marketplaces, and vivid murals that reveal a complex, cosmopolitan society. Teotihuacan's political organisation remains debated, since its writing system is poorly understood and no individual rulers can be securely identified, leading some scholars to propose collective or corporate forms of governance rather than a single dynasty of kings. The city exerted enormous cultural, economic, and possibly military influence across Mesoamerica, with evidence of its presence and prestige reaching as far as the Maya cities of the lowlands, where Teotihuacan-related figures intervened in local politics. Around 550 to 650 CE the city entered a decline, and at some point near the seventh or mid-eighth century its monumental core was deliberately burned, possibly in an internal uprising or social collapse, after which much of the population dispersed. Even centuries later the ruined city remained sacred to the Aztecs, who gave it the name Teotihuacan, meaning roughly 'the place where the gods were created.'