Less than an hour’s drive from the heart of Mexico City lies the expansive ruins of Teotihuacan, a massive city of nearly 120,000 people who built pyramids, temples and palaces before disappearing around 650 A.D.
This civilization, which pre-dates the Aztecs, remains a mystery in many ways. But new research has found they brewed a tequila-like drink called pulque as a source of food and nutrition, not just to forget their woes.
Pulque is a milky-white liquor made from the maguey plant — a relative of the agave used in tequila — and is still popular among local residents. Traces of pulque have been found on pottery shards dating at Teotihuacan dating back to 150 B.C., according to a new study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read more.
Hundreds of mysterious spheres lie beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, an ancient six-level step pyramid just 30 miles from Mexico City.
The enigmatic spheres were found during an archaeological dig using a camera-equipped robot at one of the most important buildings in the pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan.
"They look like yellow spheres, but we do not know their meaning. It’s an unprecedented discovery," said Jorge Zavala, an archaeologist at Mexico’s National Anthropology and History Institute.
The Mesoamerican ruins of Teotihuacan, a World Heritage Site, represent one of the largest urban centers of the ancient world. Thought to have been established around 100 B.C., the pyramid-filled city had more than 100,000 inhabitants at its peak, but was abandoned for mysterious reasons around 700 A.D. — long before the Aztecs arrived in the 1300s. Read more.
A diminutive robot helped researchers make a substantial discovery during preliminary tests conducted in a tunnel running under the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at the archaeological site of Teotihuacan, the team said Monday.
The team expected to find only one chamber in the last section of the tunnel — but instead, they found three, team leader Sergio Gomez said in a report published by the Mexican newspaper El Universal. The chambers are thought to have been used by Teotihuacan’s rulers roughly 2,000 years ago for royal ceremonies or burials, but they’re so choked with mud and rubble that they haven’t been explored in modern times.
That’s where the 3-foot-long (1-meter-long) robot known as Tlaloc II-TC comes in: The robot is designed to drive through the tight spaces leading to the back of the tunnel beneath the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, also known as the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. It’s equipped with a video camera as well as mechanical arms to clear obstacles. Read more.
Mexico City, Apr 16 (EFE).- A robot will soon begin exploring the last stretch of a tunnel found at the archaeological site of Teotihuacan in central Mexico, the third time anywhere in the world that such an automaton is used to design excavation strategies.
The tunnel, discovered under the Temple of the Plumed Serpent, or Quetzalcoatl, is believed to lead to a chamber almost 2,000 years old, probably a place where dignitaries of the pre-Columbian city received their investiture or were buried, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said. Read more.
MEXICO CITY— Did the rulers of the ancient city of Teotihuacan dedicate their largest pyramid to the god of fire, the so-called old god with a signature beard and fire atop his head?
Mexican archaeologists announced this week that a figure of the god, called Huehueteotl, was found in a covered pit at the apex of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, a popular archaeological site north of Mexico City.
Excavations are ongoing, but the discovery suggests that a long-disappeared temple at the top of the pyramid was used to perform ritual offerings to the fire god, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, said in a statement Monday. Read more.
Here is the photo from yesterday’s story.
Archaeologists say they have dug to the very core of Mexico’s tallest pyramid and found the original ceremonial offering placed on the site before construction began.
The offering includes a green stone mask so delicately carved and detailed that archaeologists believe it may have been a portrait. Archaeologists also found 11 ceremonial clay pots dedicated to the rain god Tlaloc.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History says the offering was laid on a rubble base where the Sun pyramid in Teotihuacan was erected in about A.D. 50.
Experts followed an old tunnel dug through the pyramid by researchers in the 1930s that narrowly missed the centre, and then dug small extensions and exploratory shafts off it. (source)
Japanese archaeologist Saburo Sugiyama discovered that the architects of the ancient city of Teotihuacán based their designs on a numerical measure equivalent to 83 centimeters (32.68 inches), Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, reported.
Sugiyama presented the finding during the 5th Teotihuacán Round Table, an INAH-sponsored gathering of experts on the largest city build by indigenous peoples in Mexico.
The researcher said that by making calculations based on the measurements of the pyramids at Teotihuacán, he was able to determine “the constant presence” of the 83-centimeter unit. Read more.