Teotihuacan

The Great city of Teotihuacan is a metropolis in the Valley of Mexico. Once a city of prestige and influence, it housed a powerful and urban population in a broad, flat valley. The name, ‘Teotihuacan,’ means ‘the place of those who have the road to the gods’. It was amid the dry, volcanic mountains of central Mexico. Teotihuacan dominated throughout Mesopotamia through trade, politics, and war. Living in a warrior society, where they emphasized violence and the valley of death. The city is a precise rectilinear grid with an architectural form resembling mountains. The axis looked at stars and mountains and mapped out the environment. The architecture is of both mass and space- mass in the temples, and the interior space within the compounds.

Typical features include single-story structures with flat roofs, talud-tablero style. Obsidian and volcanic stone were used to build the structures. Volcano’s and caves were the door to their sacred culture. The Pyramid of the Sun is one of the largest structures in of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and built over the multi-chambered cave that may have first inspired the religious practice and order of Teotihuacan. Teotihuacan structures formed specific backgrounds for rituals and public events. The positioning of the temples and pyramids were in alignment with the sun. Art was represented in sculpture, pottery and murals. It was minimalist. Murals portrayed religious events and landscapes. The scenes including hieroglyphic writing, which was much less sophisticated than the Mayans. The purpose of most structures in this city was apartment compounds for families, with each little city within Teotihuacan incorporating their own temple pyramid. Teotihuacan used hieroglyphics as their writing

It sits atop an uneven crust of cracked limestone and soil. They used limestone because it was more malleable than Obsidian and this helped with the rainy environment. It consisted of a population of only 50,000, so the Maya cities were much smaller than Teotihuacan. Large-scale archeological exploration revealed an intricate pattern of architecture. The layout of the city is a cross-patterned grouping with multi-level pyramids, platforms and large stucco masks of gods. There was a deliberate orientation with the heavens on an east-west axis. The morphology is based on limestone, often depicting scenes. Mayan art and writing contained stories of battles, sacrificial offerings and torture. There is also evidence of the Talud-Tablero architectural style found in Mayan architecture. Art in this city consisted of erect-stone monuments carved with portraits of rulers and writings of their deeds. Representation of the early Maya lords are very round and irregular forms. The famous Mayan Calender drove the pyramid constructions, paying attention to generations on 4 points of the cross. They did not have a grid system because there were too many trees in the dense jungle. The city’s ruler would construct a twin pyramid complex at the end of every 20 year period. In addition, there were 6 “temple” pyramids to mark the burial place of a ruler. The elevated platform of each