This man was not the only
man who died like this. Dozens of sacrificial victims have been found. Teotihuacan was not some
kind of a paradise of peace and harmony. There was a price to pay for this
success. The currency : human blood.
Mel Gibson made a movie
Apocalypto. He depicted in his movie the collapse of the Mayan civilization. He
connected the sacrifice of the American soldiers in Iraq with the Mayan culture. He
said : Whats human sacrifice if its not sending some guys off to Iraq
for no damn reason?
The gods in Meso-America
mythology had to be nourished and was the faith of humans to have to keep the
gods going.
With this discovery we know
now that Teotihuacan.
was not a peaceful city that we thought it was. It is thought that there were
many wars. The people being sacrificed were obtained as prisoners of war. They
were taken in battle. The
Teotihuacanen apparently appeased their gods, the blood of the vanquished. The
red of the city takes on an entirely new meaning, and it worked. The city
thrived hundreds of years. But somehow at the height of its power and influence
something went wrong. Blood was not enough, the gods betrayed the city of
pyramids. Everything that had become, would be destroyed
forever. How did it happen ? For more than 5 centuries the metropolis of T. thrived. And then around
the 6th century it collapsed. The sacred centre of the city was
abandoned. This is a mystery that haunts those who have wandered among the
empty ruins. The city had the wealth of a continent at its disposal. How could
it have fallen apart so completely ? The pyramid builders disappearance is a
huge mystery that can be solved from the tiniest of clues, not the pyramids
themselves, but teeth collected from ancient graves.
Teeth are one of the best
ways to gain insight into the health of an individual. Strong teeth translate
to good general health. And the teeth found here reveal that all was not well.
Michael Spence
(archaeologist) : In the later years of the citys history health was not as
good.
The cause of the declining
health : the popularity of the pyramids themselves. Too many people came to
live in their protective shadow. The city became a warren of crowded streets
riddled with disease and the stink of uitwerpselen. There was not enough food
to eat or water to drink. Lifespans were short.
Michael Spence : There
could be various reasons for that : failures in food supply, contamination of
water sources,
A very large city such as
this, with a lot of debris and human exclaments going to the drainage. It was
not a very hygienic city.
The pyramids were too
successful. Tensions ran high. The city had grown to the breaking point. There
was a standing army. A sign that the rulers felt the need to protect themselves
from invasion or even from their own citizens. A chism was growing between rich
and poor. The citys main boulevard, the street of the dead, was now forbidden
territory for common people.
Ian Robertson
(archaeologist) : The street of the dead became highly segregated. Very much in
the hands of a league, theyll undo carnals.
Then a final catastrophy :
one the blood sacrifice and the citys careful alignment to the stars could not
prevent. Drought, the need for rain became desperate. The priests even killed
infants, believing the tears of babies could bring rain.
Anthony F. Aveni
(astronomer-anthropologist) : What people may have asked during this cataclysm
: What was it that caused the gods to abandon us? Why did they forsake us?
Linda Manzanilla
(archaeologist) : The thing that may have happened is that people said that the
priests were not doing their job.
Scientists once believed
that as the city collapsed internally, it was invaded and destroyed. But there
is little evidence of a power in the region large enough to invade and defeat
even the weaken city. Teotihuacan
must have destroyed itself.
Born from fear of
volcanoes, the city would die in fire. Almost 15 centuries later evidence is
still visible on the walls of the pyramids and temples. Signs
of arsine. The fires were so hot, they blackened the stone.
Maybe it occured
spontaneously one night during a sacred ritual, a sacrifice, a plea for rain or
food. One theory holds that the city residents rose in revolt and burned the
symbols of their former glory. And now they believed of all their misery: the
pyramids. A tantalizing clue supports this theory. There is evidence of
firedamage in the 2000 appartment complexes. But another theory is far stranger
and even more haunting : scientists have found evidence of charpiles of wood in
the ruins of the temples. Remnants of large bonfires. Not the kind of blaze set
in a riot. These were premeditated fires. The real culprits may have been the very
priests who tended to the gods and pyramids.
