In the city of the gods

(Published in The Courier Mail)

OUR tourist guide commands us to halt. We are sitting in the middle of the Teotihuacan amphitheatre where, allegedly, the ancient Mexican city's people watched and celebrated human sacrifices to the moon and the sun.

Small temples surround us in square formation with the mountain-sized Pyramid of the Moon watching over us all. We have only just arrived.
Excited to experience ancient magic, we hurriedly separated into gender-based groups, formed battle lines, took 86 steps apart and faced each other. Then repeated a "clapping-of-the-hands" sequence -- the sound ricocheting off the surrounding temples and feeding back to our ears. It is as if the temples were designed to amplify and distort sound.

Of Teotihuacan descent himself, our guide proudly informed us the Teotihuacanos were of an age before the wheel and physics (around the first century BC) and such an acoustic design would prove to be an evolutionary achievement.

Perched 2310 metres high in a valley 50km outside of Mexico City, the city's arresting features are the Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun. Both were built by the Teotihuacanos over a number of centuries as pieties to the sun and moon gods.

The Pyramid of the Sun is the larger of the two and is bettered only by two Egyptian counterparts for the biggest in the world, with a height of 70 metres and a base length of 220 metres. A total of three million tonnes of stone, brick and rubble were amassed for its creation without the assistance of a solitary wheel or metal tool.
We braced ourselves for the moment of physical endurance and ascended the steep face of the Pyramid of the Moon. From atop we are rewarded with a bird's eye view of the city and its surrounds. At the civilisation's peak, the city spanned 13km and housed more than 150,000 people.

The Avenue of the Dead, bordered by temples, dominates the city's ground floor stretching longer than 4km. At the top end the avenue is the Pyramid of the Moon, surrounded by large temples and the Jaguar Palace. At the other end is the Pyramid of the Sun, smaller residential compounds and alleged tombs of Teotihuacan's first rulers (hence its horror-movie name). Over all, the city's design plants a strong sense of an ordered and hierarchical society.

Aside from their unquestionable devotion to the sun and moon and some residual worshipping to a four-eyed, two-fanged rain god called Tlaloc, not much is known about the Teotihuacan Empire which mysteriously vanished in 7th century AD.

The Aztecs, discovering the city in the 15th century, believed Teotihuacan was the site of sacrifice for all gods, labelling it "city of the gods". Aztec royalty would often return to the site to worship and pay homage.

Mexicans continue to do so to this day, travelling from all around their country in white dress to enhance the spiritual experience of their visit. White spots dotted our vision as we stood atop the pyramids.

At our next destination, the Jaguar Palace, we became witnesses to current debate by archaeologists as to the Teotihuacanos' nature. Murals and etchings on palace walls depict the Teotihuacanos' affinity with nature and animals, supporting one view they were a peaceful pastoral folk.

However, a discovery in December last year of a sacrificial burial site within the Pyramid of the Moon, containing 10 decapitated slaves, has archaeologists moving towards the theory the Teotihuacanos were a more violent and warrior-like people.

Leaving the debate for the academics, we strolled back into the city's Avenue of the Dead; our eyes open in conjunction with our imagination. Peddlers and merchants brooded and leered in corners selling smiles and tacky memoirs under the beating sun.

We walked past them en-route to the Pyramid of the Sun. An equally arduous climbing task, but yet again the views are the reward.

We walked the remainder of the Avenue of the Dead to the city's exit in search of water and shade. Thankful for our little exercise in Teotihuacan magic.