Today we spent eight hours visiting Teotihuacan. We saw maybe half the archaeological site. Much of the old city is now under people's houses or businesses, but even the designated archaeological site is huge. Maybe 85 thousand people lived in Teotihuacan at its height, and they liked to build stuff.
We got to the site just before 8am. We had hoped to be there about an hour earlier so we could take some photos in the dawn light, but you know how it goes. Wouldn't have mattered if we had arrived earlier, since the gate guard wasn't ready to take our cash until about five minutes after we got there.
The first order of business was to climb the temple of the sun, the largest ancient pyramid in the Americas. The goal was to take a few pictures of the entire site from on high, with the early morning light providing good contrast. A very friendly dog decided to join us in the climb. Michelle got stuck one level from the top and declined to go higher, so only the dog and I were on top of the pyramid when a dozen hot air balloons came floating past. One daredevil pilot, instead of going past the pyramid, decided to go directly over the top. I wasn't sure whether his balloon was going to climb fast enough to clear the top of the pyramid, so I took cover on the far side as they drew near. No need to worry though: they cleared the top by at least twice my height.
In the excitement, I quite forgot to take a complete set of photos of the site. Oh well, it's on google maps :-)
When we visited Teotihuacan in 1995, we knew very little about mesoamerica. It was nice to visit the site and the associated museums knowing a bit more. I was quite interested to see sculptures representing the nobles of Teotihuacan with flattened foreheads. I knew that the Mayans and the people of Monte Alban would tie stones to the foreheads of young nobles so as to deform their skulls; I hadn't realized that had also been the practice in Teotihuacan. The giant ear plugs were also worn by all three cultures. The things people will do to be fashionable!
The Mexican archaeological ministry, INAH, has been busily excavating and restoring buildings at Teotihuacan since our last visit. Unfortunately, that meant the Temple of Quetzalpapalotl was closed for restoration and we were unable to revisit its carvings and murals. As a more than sufficient consolation, we had the time to visit three palaces that were away from the main site and that have spectacular murals. I have to give credit to the Lonely Planet guide to Mexico: without their decriptions of the various palaces, we would never have known to make the effort to visit them and be astounded that such vivid paintings still exist after being exposed to wind and weather for more than a thousand years.
One thing that struck us as quite odd is that there is no restored ball court at Teotihuacan. Every other major mesoamerican site we have visited has had a ball court somewhere quite close to the main ceremonial complex. They have excavated things from Teotihuacan that they think are related to the ball game, but if they have found a ball court anywhere on the site, they aren't advertising its existence.
We saw quite a few birds onsite as well, but didn't get any pictures, nor did they hold still long enough for us to have much hope of identifying what we saw.
I've put a few general pictures from today up on picasaweb: https://picasaweb.google.com/100719842898341494426/20120108Teotihuacan
We thought about bringing the dog home with us, but decided that Cordelia would object.
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