Teotihuacan: Rome of the Ancient Americas

Around 100 CE, a huge metropolis began to emerge in the Basin of Mexico, one the Aztecs would later call Teotihuacan, or “Birthplace of the Gods.” It quickly came to dominate the region, and, with its completely new urban grid-plan, contained as many as 150,000 people. Its two gigantic buildings, the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, were surrounded by smaller temples, plazas, and a thousand or more apartment compounds. They were all once richly painted in dazzling colors and complex designs depicting twisting feathered serpents, prowling jaguars, storm gods and water goddesses, priests, warriors, and lords. But its history has long been a mystery, and we are only now beginning to understand its importance and impact on ancient Mesoamerica.

Speaker: Simon Martin, Associate Curator and Keeper in the American Section, Penn Museum and Adjunct Associate Professor Anthropology, UPenn

[AncientAmericas]

Great lecture! Always a pleasure to hear what Simon Martin has to say!

[wetdroidedition]

As a Mexican I really enjoy this talk. Thanks. However, I dare to suggest something, not about the content but about the form. To help those of us who watch the talks online, it would be great if next time you could upload the images in their original resolution or that whoever does the favor of recording the talk could zoom in on the images shown by the speaker. That would help a lot.

[Istehomo]

I have been waiting for another lecture by Simon Martin - thank you so much for up-loading.

[matthewgauthier]

Thank you. Remarkable detective work being done. Had the pleasure of visiting this site in 1977. Was only 17 years old but its such a massive place.
I've still very clear images of sitting atop the Sun Pyramid and the sense even then that I was seeing something very important.

[Redefine]

Thanks so much for sharing with us! Really appreciate this content.

[DavidSmith-ibjl]

Why was this video done with just a small section being what is projected on the screen and seven times more area on the dark theater? You can't make out what is on the screen. What a wasteful way to use media.

[urbaneplanner]

Fascinating- incredible to think of the connections and interactions between teotihucan and the Mayan cities far away and interesting to hear how little we still seem to know about teotihucan

[xDarkZuNx]

Great lecture! A little late on the update. I read about this a few years back.

I personally think Teotihuacan was early form of the Nawa. They're definitely the cultural inherentors of Teotihuacan and have many cultural similarities. As for the government, I'd imagine that it was some sort of centered authority at the beginning, the middle and shifted to a more collective government later in its lifecycle. Perhaps with 4 or 5 rulers jointly rulling around 450 or later.

[stevemill]

I’ve talked to locals who live/grew up there. They say much more excavation needs to be done, but they are expanding the town around the site which is covering over human history

[chattykathie]

Are these lectures free to attend in person?

[Trigelaus]

It would be great to see the presentation not the all audience :/

[Jaybo]

I was really excited to find an authoritative video on Teotihuacan.
The scene is set: we view a stage with a large screen from behind an anticipative, though admittedly sparse, crowd. The host introduces Dr. Simon Martin with a lengthy list of his qualifications and experience of the topic. I think to myself, "This is going to be good!"
However, after a minute or two of watching the good Dr. chatting amiably from stage left and with the view on my monitor screen remaining stubbornly static, it dawns on me that, tragically, this viewpoint isn't going to change.
As others here have commented: what a waste of screen real estate. If someone is describing a slide doesn't it make sense that viewers should be able to make out the image? The audience is in the auditorium; their focus of attention is the screen. People viewing this on a monitor or TV screen or worse, a tablet or phone screen, are being forced to screw up their eyes to make out any detail in a very limited area when they should be being presented with close-ups of the visual specifics being talked about.
There are so many points for discussion here in relation to failure to engage a wider audience that I don't know where to begin.
One might have expected that such a prestigious university would hire people who know what they're doing when providing online content. You have the informational and visual resources available here to engage the maximum number of people, yet with this format many potential viewers will move on the moment they realise you lumbered them with this limited perspective.
After all, isn't a picture worth a thousand words?

[robswright]

Great lecture! Which article from Jesper Nielsen & Christophe Helmke is referenced with the slide at minute 38:00?

[bristleconepinus]

there seemed to be a giant reservoir constructed about half way down the street of the dead. There were inlet and outflow channels built into the low walls of the enclosure as if it were meant to hold water. the obsidian napping ids so good that there are actually portraits of real people represented.

[habtamneftenya]

Please post where roman pyramids are located

[ivornelsson]

Dear Steve Tinney & Simon Martin,
Thanks for this interesting video content.

Apparently and understandably, modern scholars and academics are having huge troubles discerning and interpretating primordial and supreme deities of both genders and this of course requires more overall knowledge but the archaeological education.

The supreme deities in all cultures all belongs to the Story of Creation, and this story must at the least, concern a creation description of what humans all over the world can observe with their naked eyes:

Namely local terrestrial and seasonal conditions, the observation of the Sun, the Moon, the 5 wandering planets, stars, star constellations, the celestial rotation pole axis of the Earth, the annual nocturnal shift of constellations, and at the largest, the whitish band of the Milky Way, observable all around the Earth in the darker seasons.

Such a knowledge seems to be included and depicted by hieroglyphs and murals in the Mesoamerican temples and otherwhere, having temples of the Sun, the Moon and of the Feathered Serpent figure, initiated by the imaginative look of the Milky Way contours. A celestial Serpent residing in the nocturnal realms of flying birds.

When a tribe or a larger population has become more steadfast, such information of the overall creation is specifically noticed and marked in every specific location, hence larger distances between local tribes cannot be taken as evidence for cultural migration.

The celestial astronomical and cosmological scenario logically provide very much the similar hieroglyphic images and symbolism in different separated local cultures, hence the very much similar symbolism are found in different cultures, simply inspired by the same celestial observations.

If scholars are lacking the astronomical and cosmological awareness of the Milky Way watery symbolism, they very easily can confuse references to solar and lunar symbolism which really belongs to the central luminous Light in the Milky Way, and its crescent hemispheric shape, interpreting this crescent figure as a Lunar symbolism and a Lunar Temple.

When dealing with prime and superior deities of both genders, neither the Sun nor the Moon can qualify to the supreme creative powers as referred in the Creation Stories. Here the galactic powers are more forceful and creative.


Enjoy and Best Wishes

[waltergandy]

Teotihuacan, to me, was a ancient airport where the Gods landed
Their Spaceships on those pads, they had to
Make them strong enough, made of huge stone blocks to support
Their Spaceships...ect...

[NaskoČašić]

Na. Linija. Sydac. Milanovac.
I. Miresav. Miskovac.
Lonadon

[NaskoČašić]

Kala. Depdnte. Xaska. Tyzetica.
Iz. Mexika.

[cherylnagy]

sparsely attended lecture, most unfortunate