Teotihaucan - "the place where men become gods."

This is a blog post from one of my friends here and it was so good I asked if she minded if I just added it to my blog.  We were all on this same trip, but she reported on it much better than I.

We have been to see the pyramids at Teotihaucan many times and always left with so much wonder and many questions.  So we were super excited to join this tour group of missionaries and two new Mission Presidents and their families to have Nacho give us a tour of these ancient ruins.  Once again, he said he would only share the coincidences and we could make connections to the people and culture in the Book of Mormon if we wanted to.  

Nacho said that MesoAmerica is covered with Pre-Columbian ruins.  There are 50 sites in Peru, 10,000 sites in Honuras, 50,000 sites in Guatamala and 172,000 sites in Mexico.

I was really pumped to get the "inside scoop"..I took notes and stayed close to the tour guide so I wouldn't miss anything.

The word Teotihuacan means "the place where men become gods."  The people that built this site came from the Gulf of Mexico, and at the peek of this civilization there were 200,000 people here.  The peek time period was 100 BC to 300 AD.  The people were called Teotihuacaners.  This culture sort of disappeared and abandoned Teotihuacan around 800 AD.  Afterwards the Toltecs lived here for a while.

Teotihuacan has pyramids to the Sun and the Moon, and then there are lots of small pyramids like stars around the complex.

We stopped at the moon pyramid first which is aligned perfectly with the moon (in the sky).  The Moon was always associated with woman. The moon circles the earth every 28 days which is similar to a woman's cycle.  And the lunar orbit is 260 days -- the same number of days a baby is in the womb. 

This pyramid of the moon is surrounded by 12 small pyramids. 

We are standing on the Pyramid of the Moon and you can see the Pyramid of the Sun in the distance.  The Sun Pyramid is also perfectly aligned with the Sun (in the sky) and the pyramid's shadow never touches the ground on the North and South sides of the pyramid.  The pyramids aren't the temples, they are the mountains the people built and then put temples (buildings) on the top.  Just like Moses climbed Mt. Sinai in the Old Testament, they would climb their man-made "mountain" to get closer to God.  And in these Temples, sacred ceremonies would be performed.  An Egyptian archaeologist, not knowing how the Indians built their pyramids used dynamite and destroyed the top of the temple.  The base of the pyramid is similar in size to the Egyptian ones but it is not as steep and tall.  

Pyramids are built like onions.  Most pyramids started out small and then new pyramids would be built on top.  About every 50 years a new pyramid would be built on top of the old one.  This is the door at the base of the Sun pyramid which leads to a chamber in the center.  Nacho said an old container that held oil was found in the chamber.  Unfortunately there are no tours inside the pyramid.

There are a few places on the ruins where you can see the traces of colored paintings.  Archeologists believe that these ruins were very colorful, and our guide showed us where a lot of the color came from.  Can you see the white ash looking stuff on the cactus?  Those are pregnant parasites and when he scraped some off the cactus and crushed them onto the paper they made that hot pink color.  (I saw it with my own eyes!)  

Then he pulled out this bag of flowers and herbs and proceeded to make a rainbow of colors for us.  It was pretty amazing.

Some of the ruins have these small rocks in the mortar between the larger stones and some of the ruins are just stone and mortar.  These small stones let you know that this part of the ruins have been rebuilt.  The archeologists have left their mark so you know what is original and what has been repaired.

This black stone is obsidian.  I think it is one of the coolest souvenirs they sell.  You can look through the obsidian at the sun and see the sun without hurting your eyes.

 

We sat on these steps while Nacho stood in the Calle de los Muertos (the street of the dead) and explained about towers and how people from the street might listen to people preach from their towers.

This other pyramid was built for Quezacoatl, The Feathered Serpent, or the Great White Bearded God.  This is the oldest and most original part of the complex.  There are 12 small pyramids circling the Quezacoatl pyramid and 3 pyramids behind it.  

In ancient american culture, if an animal flew it represented  heaven.  If an animal crawled on the ground it represented mankind.  So a flying serpent represents something that is part God and part human.  

There were 365 flying serpents on the Quezacoatl pyramid, one for every day of the year, but some are in  museums now.  This is a really awesome thing to see!

Nacho also showed us how weights and measures are used in the Mayan culture and are very different from the way we measure and count today but similar to how it is described in Alma 11.

There is so much not known about this mysterious place.  They believe it was a theocratic society (governed by God).  But they haven't found any tombs or royalty, so there are still lots of unanswered questions and lots of WONDER!