Piecing Together the Fall of Teotihuacan

by Eric Rosenfield

10/30/2002

Course: Of Fire and Blood: Art and Mythology of Mexico

Instructor: Jaime Arredondo

Overthrowing the Gods:

Piecing Together the Fall of Teotihuacan

by Eric Rosenfield

Introduction

Teotihuacan, literally translated from the Nahuatl language of the natives, means “the Place Where the Gods Were Made”. The city is among the largest and most impressive pre-Columbian sites in the Americas – anthropologist Michael Coe referred to it as “the most important site in the whole of Mexico”¹ - yet the dense shroud of mystery that has always covered it is only just beginning to be lifted, and there are many questions we may never be able to answer.

At it's height circa 500 A.D., the City of Teotihuacan was the 6^th largest city in the world². It's great pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun, is the 3^rd largest pre-industrial pyramid constructed³, and the largest in the Americas, at 213 feet high. The City of Teotihuacan had an estimated population of over 200,000⁴ taking up 14 square miles, and an economic and military empire that stretched as far north as modern Mexican state of Jalisco, and as far south as Guatemala and Honduras⁵ - a cultural spread that remained unrivaled up until the Spanish Conquest in the 16^th century.

The events leading up to the sudden and mysterious abandonment of Teotihuacan in the 8^th century after over 700 years of dominating the Mesoamerican region can only be surmised, pieced together from archaeological data; the Teotihuacanos had no written language that we know of, and no pictorial histories, like those of the later Toltecs and Aztecs, have been found. Recently, through the seminal excavation work by René Millon and his Teotihuacan Mapping Project in the 1980s and the subsequent analysis of his data, we have begun to get an idea of the size, scope and make-up of the Teotihuacano population.

The goal of this essay is to examine the social and political make-up of the city, and through it arrive at a working theory of the what happened to bring about the fall of Teotihuacan. The essay will argue that the fall of the city and it's empire was a rebellion within the city itself, a result of class warfare sparked by economic and environmental disaster that had both sprouted up around it, and been caused by it.

The Nature of the Teotihuacan Empire

The City of Teotihuacan was founded in a valley of dormant volcanoes rich in deposits of gray and green obsidian, a volcanic rock used to make mirrors and artwork and a valuable commodity at the time. The City itself was centered around a lava-cave that stretched in a winding tunnel until it terminated at a natural spring⁶. The cave was considered holy, and the pyramid of the sun was built directly on top of it and enlarged over the centuries until it reached it's current height.

According to Anthropologist Ross Hassig, from 600-300 B.C the Valley of Mexico began to center around Teotihuacan⁷. That the City began a military conquest of the region is evidenced by the fortified hilltops in the Puebla and Tlaxcala regions of the Valley⁸. During this time there were forced resettlements of the neighboring rural towns into the city itself⁹. By 3-400 B.C., the empire was extending out beyond the valley into the Tula region and Eastern Morelos¹⁰.

Teotihuacan began creating “colony” towns. Early examples of this are the towns of Tepeapulco and Huapalcalco, which are both 18 miles from the city, but in different directions. Both towns had distinctly Teotihuacan architecture and ceramics, and “almost certainly had a Teotihuacan population”¹¹. The reason for these satellitite towns becomes clear when observe, for example, Huapalcalco's nearness to Tula, and the region's abundance of lime, quartz and other valuable rocks. The colony towns provided a useful way to establish control of a region, and, in all probability, keep a watchful eye on tributaries such as Tula. The Americas had no horses or beasts of burden at this time, and so these colonies provided a means for Teotihuacan to create an empire over large distances.

Over the centuries, as Teotihuacan's control began extending throughout the sub-continent, the city seemed to develop 3 methods for dominating a region. One, they conquered a town militarily and administrated it directly, which they could do with the villages inside, say, day two's walk from the city; Two, they would conquer a town militarily, and then established a colony of Teotihuacanos who would keep a dutiful eye on it.

The third method of conquest was far more clever. Neighbors such as Cholula were too powerful to overcome easily. So, instead, Teotihuacan conquered around it, making it part of the city's trading system and dominating it "culturally, economically and, most likely, politically"¹².

Because Teotihuacan didn't have the transportation technology to conquer and maintain vast swaths of land in a Roman manner, it instead secured corridors of trade with a military presence, and then conquered places with valuable resources through the methods listed above. In this way, by their height in 500 A.D., they managed to spread as far as Kiminaliju, the site of modern day Guatemala City. While “Kaminaliju probably did not pay tribute to distant Teotihuacan”¹³, the city's dominance there secured it exclusive trading rights to the obsidian-rich area, giving it a monopoly.

If trade, then, was the purpose of extremely distant conquests of the Empire, and trade was also the means in which they were able to overcome other powerful states, then it stands to reason that trade was a major buttress of the Teotihuacan economy, if not the major buttress.

Social Order of Teotihuacan

“It was long assumed... that the mode of government [in Teotihuacan] was theocratic, with a a priestly group exercising temporal power” however, new evidence suggests “warriors also played key roles"¹⁴. Archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma identifies the nobility of the city as being priests “supported by warrior chiefs”¹⁵.

Hassig suggests that the warrior chiefs were composed of a “military meritocracy”, saying: “The general lack of commemorative monuments reflects a society that stressed types and classes rather than individuals, suggesting that it was not rigidly hierarchal and was open to at least some advancement based on achievement”¹⁶

Since, like most Mesoamerican civilizations, the majority of the people of the Teotihuacan Empire were farmers, major armies could only be mounted during the dry season, so that it would not disrupt food cultivation. If the military system was indeed meritocratic, than it would provide a way for a common farmer to achieve fame, glory, and status as one of the ruling nobility.

Other classes in the Empire included the builders, who constructed the city's great monuments, temples and housing; the artisans who crafted the ceramics, sculptures and murals; and the all important merchant class, through whom trade was conducted. Because of the central importance of trade in the empire's economy, and because of the practice of both forced and voluntary relocation to the city, Teotihuacan became extremely multicultural. Two large areas have identified in the city where non-Teotihuacano ethnicities resided. The “Oaxaca Quarter”, where there is an abundance of Oaxaca craft work and burials, and the “Merchant Quarter”, where there were many ethnicities from the Gulf Coast, who were “probably families of Merchants”¹⁷.

Notable among the layout of of the city is the presence of the “Ciudadela” or citadel, a walled off portion of the city containing the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. This is where the “the city and the rulers likely lived”¹⁸. Rene Millon wrote “It seems that this area [the Ciudadela] was the heart of the city geographically, culturally, politically and probably even economically”¹⁹. Millon postulated that the “Great Compound” across from the Ciudadela was the marketplace of the city. This would stress the centrality of the nobility (priests and military chiefs) on one side and the merchants on the other.

Teotihuacan at the Time of the Fall

In dividing up the chronology of Teotihuacan, archaeologists identify the last two periods as being the Xolalpan Phase (A.D. 450-650) during which time the city reached dizzying heights in art, architecture, and cultural influence, and the Metepec Phase (A.D. 650-750), during which time the Empire went into sharp decline before it suddenly and mysteriously combusted.

Scholar G. C. Valliant wrote of the final period of Teotihuacan, that "Teotihuacan was built over hastily with the maximum use of original construction. The abrupt change in figurine styles suggests new gods were being honored. The drain on human resources implicit in such large scale construction, would lead readily to revolt under the strain"²⁰.

Villiant was also the first to suggest that the massive deforestation of the surrounding area to produce limestone caused the drying up of streams and erosions of fields, ruining the surrounding farmland.²¹

Archaeologist Esther Pasztory offers a clue to what was happening during this period:

“What is remarkable is that so much time, labor and energy were expended on permanent dwellings for the population rather than primarily on palatial structures. This may reflect the growing wealth, political power, and integration of the population.”²²

Also, during this final period Teotihuacan became decentralized. Villages and towns began cropping up all around it, where before any such outliers had been absorbed into the city. To make matters more complicated, far off tributaries were gaining enough power buck the Empire, as subjected areas gained power and colony towns began to become powerful cities in their own right. The empire was contracting.

Hassig notes: “As its trade and colonial areas contracted, the military became increasingly prominent in Teotihuacan”²³, citing the increase of military depictions in murals during the period. There are two explanations for this: 1, because the Empire could no longer control many of it's foreign possessions, the military forces that had held these places were being recalled; and 2, the city was trying to stem internal conflicts, as the city's power began to disperse from the nobility into the lower classes.

Indeed the power struggle between the apparently highly stratified classes in the city may explain both the change in worship that concerned Vallient and final destruction of the city itself. As we shall see in the next section, during the abandonment of the city it was the only the areas of nobility and ceremony that were destroyed, suggesting class warfare.

The Fall – Putting the Pieces Together

It has long been known that there is extreme fire damage to structures in the ceremonial area, collapsed roofs, and holes that look like they where actively punctured. Most common theory is that the city was razed by “unknown invaders”. However, Millon was the first to suggest, in 1988, that the destruction was an inside job. He sites lack of evidence of invaders and the fact that many of the burnings were conducted in front of the main stairways, which was a common ritual practice in the city directly before the reconstruction of a major building.²⁴ Pasztory notes that the fires were restricted to the ceremonial areas and that, significantly, “the area of the Ciudadela was particularly badly burned.”²⁵

From this, and the evidence already presented, a workable narrative of the fall of Teotihuacan can be put together:

1. The Empire grows gradually, spreading throughout Mesoamerica and developing a several means of controlling foreign areas.

2. The Empire establishes dominance in the region, and maintains a monopoly on valuable goods. It allows it's people class advancement through the military, and there is multiculturalism, with many different ethnic groups co-existing, presumably peacefully. For centuries the system works, and Teotihuacan is an unrivaled power.

3. Eventually, the non-priest classes become progressively more powerful, both through advancement in the military that the priesthood need to support its semi-theocracy, and through the growing wealth of the merchants, who control the trade that the entire civilization is built upon.

4. As the foreign ethnicities, with their own gods and beliefs, grow in size and power, they create friction between the priestly and non-priestly classes and cause a major change in worship patterns towards the last period of the empire – perhaps an act of desperation to appease the non-priestly majority, or perhaps representing a genuine over-throw of the priests and a new regime.

5. Tributary and colony states become steadily more powerful, eventually becoming too powerful for a far-off metropolis to manage. They end the monopoly that Teotihuacan has over trade, causing economic problems in the city.

6. The deforestation of the surrounding lands makes farming and the production of limestone difficult, and as supplies from outside the easy reach of the city dwindle due to the aformentioned trade problems, the people of the city are both starving and economically depressed.

7. This all causes internal class conflicts between the starving, poor farmers and merchant classes, and the ruling nobility. Military aid is brought in to prevent rebellion.

8. Class warfare erupts, perhaps sparked by burnings in front of the temples signifying the start of more monumental construction. The idea of more construction in this time of turmoil is too much for the builders, farmers and merchants - the last straw, so-to-speak. The military is overwhelmed, if not actively joining the rebellion itself, since most of the military men where farmers to begin with, and collectively they take the fires and burn down the Ciudadela and the ceremonial buildings and abandon the city for greener pastures.

Is this what actually occurred 1300 years ago? Perhaps. As stated before, this can only be the realm of speculation. However, given the evidence it is not unlikely that this is the events leading the fall of what was once the greatest civilization in the Americas.

Conclusion

Later civilizations would be just as mystified by this formidable ruin as we are. The 200 year period of chaos and lack of centralized government that followed the fall wiped out all but glimmering memories of the Empire. The Aztecs, who named the place Teotihuacan, believed that this was where the sun and the moon were created.

However, Moctezuma points out that a cycle of imperial dominance followed by revolt of subjugated people were frequent in the pre-Columbian region, and resulted in the fall of the Toltecs, and explains why so many Aztec tributary states were so eager to join Cortez in his overthrow of the mighty Tonochtitlan²⁶.

Of course, this pattern of the fall of empires is hardly unique. People of an Empire rising up against imperialism, class stratification, and the misuse of resources can be seen all through the history of the world, from the fall of Rome to the American Revolution. Perhaps, then, the fall of Teotihuacan is not so very mysterious. Perhaps, despite its questions that can never be answered, it represents a state of affairs that reoccurs throughout history right up to the present day. The fall of Teotihuacan can be seen as a warning, a warning about the dangers of subjugating other cultures, of stratifying classes, of monopolizing trade, of destroying the environment you depend on – and these warnings could not be any more prescient than in modern times.

Bibliography

Michael D. Coe and Rex Koontz, Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs, Thames and Hudson, New York, NY, 1994

Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Teotihuacan: The City of the Gods, Rizzoli International Publications, INC, New York, NY, 1990

Ross Hassig, War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica, University of California Press, Los Angeles, CA, 1992

David Carrasco, Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire, University Press of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 2000

G. C. Vallient, Aztecs of Mexico, Penguin Books Ltd., Hammondsworth, England, 1944

Esther Psztory, A Reconstruction of Teotihuacan and Its Mural, included in Feathered Serpents and Flowering Trees, Fine Arts Museams of San Fransisco, San Fransisco, CA, 1988

Saburo Sugiyama, Teotihuacan Home Page, http://archaeology.la.asu.edu/teo/

Teotihuacan, http://www.differentworld.com/mexico/places/mexico_city/teotihuacan.htm

I encourage readers to visit Professor Sugiyama's Teotihuacan Home Page at http://archaeology.la.asu.edu/teo/ as it is the best Teotihuacan resource on the Web, and contains many wonderful photographs.