A structure of seven pyramids built on top of each other, the Pyramid of
the Moon is a major tourist site in the ancient city of Teotihuacan, in the
valley of the same name 25 miles north of Mexico City.
Little is known about this master-planned metropolis that was the first
great city of the Western Hemisphere and predated the Aztecs, who called the
monumental ruins "the City of the Gods," by around 700 years.
At its peak, Teotihuacan spread in a sophisticated grid pattern over
eight square miles and had a population of more than 150,000 people.
The City of the Gods began declining sharply around 650 A.D., and was almost
completely abandoned around 750 A.D. Unlike any other ancient society of the
Americas, the site offered scholars no clue — in hieroglyphs or writings
of any kind — of who ruled it, what their culture was about and why
the city was abandoned.
"Teotihuacan presented itself as a timeless place, as if it existed from
time immemorial and would exist into eternity, outside of history and
historical contingency," Esther Pasztory, specialist in pre-Hispanic art at
Columbia University, wrote in her book "Teotihuacan: An Experiment in Living."
One of the city's oldest structures, the Pyramid of the Moon, would have
been a site for celebrating state power through ceremony and sacrifice,
according to Sugiyama.
The burial chamber contained the remains of 12 people with their hands tied
behind their backs. Ten of the victims had been decapitated and
appeared to have been tossed, rather than arranged, to one side of the
chamber.
The other two bodies also had their hands tied, but were richly
ornamented with greenstone earspools and beads, a necklace made of
imitation human jaws and other items indicating high rank.
The burial chamber also contained five canine skeletons (wolf or coyote),
three feline skeletons (puma or jaguar), and 13 complete bird remains (many
tentatively identified as eagles), all animals that are believed to be
symbols of warriors in Teotihuacano iconography, Sugiyama said.
The sacrifice of the people and the animals "must have created a horrible
scene of bloodshed," he said.
"We don't know who the victims were, but we know that this ritual was
carried out during the enlargement process of a major monument in
Teotihuacan, and highly symbolic objects associated with them suggest that
the government wanted to symbolize expanding sacred political power and
perhaps the importance of military institutions with the new monument,"
Sugiyama said in a statement.
Another impressive find was a greenstone mosaic figure "unlike
anything seen before in Mesoamerica."
The mosaic figure was found in an unusual "offering" at the center of the
burial chamber. It was surrounded by 18 large obsidian knives, carefully
set in a radial pattern.
"Nine of these had a curving form, while the nine others had the form of
the feathered serpent, a symbol of maximum political authority. Evidently
this offering in some way formed the central symbolic meaning of the grave
complex," Sugiyama said.
"The placement of humans as offerings in elite tombs was a common practice
in many ancient societies in the Old and New World, so this discovery — on
one level — is not surprising," John Verano, a physical
anthropologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, told Discovery News.
"However, usually the people sacrificed to
accompany elite persons are not executed in such a violent manner as is
seen at the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan. The binding and
decapitation of victims and the careless way in which the bodies seem to
have been thrown into the tomb, suggests that they were enemies, not
servants or family of the two elites in the tomb," he said.
"This seems to be a new
and unusual practice, and is quite interesting."
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