Cerro Gordo Standing Sentinel Over Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan was by the fifth century AD the largest city in the American continent and one of the largest and most populous in the western hemisphere. Often called the ‘Rome of America’, its cultural and political influence extended from the north of Mexico to the southern Maya lands of Honduras and Guatemala. Yet, surprisingly little is known of the origins of the great metropolis on the altiplano, laying a mere 50 kilometers to the northeast of Mexico City.
View of Teotihuacan in Mexico (Leonid Andronov/ Adobe Stock)
The earliest Aztec legends describe Teotihuacan as the place where men became gods and the present Sun was born over 5,000 years ago. With its three immense pyramids - the largest, called the Pyramid of the Sun, covering almost the same exact base area as the Great Pyramid of Giza - the city appears to have been sprung as if out of nowhere in the first centuries of current era. Were the mysterious Olmecs the original builders of Teotihuacan? Or an even earlier race that, as the earliest Aztec legends suggest, arrived on the coasts of Mexico from a land across the Atlantic Ocean thousands of years ago?
