"M" for Mexico (part 3)

Mexico, and in particular Mexico City, is of course the Mexica as well.

This is how the famous Aztecs used to call themselves. 

With the capital of their empire at Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), they ruled most of Central Mexico from the Gulf Coast to the Pacific from 1325 until the Spanish conquest in 1521. 

Templo Mayor, now located in the heart of Mexico City, is the best known Aztec site. 

The temple is thought to be on the exact spot where, according to the legend, the symbolic eagle perched on a cactus while devouring a serpent and by that signaled to the Aztecs where to found their capital city. The image is displayed on the Mexican flag! In Aztec belief, this spot was the center of the universe. 

Templo Mayor was dedicated to both Huitzilopochtli - the god of the war and the sun, and Tlaloc - the god of the rain. It consisted of a pyramidal platform, on top of which were two twin temples - the South one was Huitzilopochtli's, and the North one was Tlaloc's.

The Aztecs were first and above all warriors and made human sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli…

Several skulls, bones and funerary offerings were found during the excavations at Templo Mayor. 

Together with knives, braziers and musical instruments used during the rituals... 

The site is fascinating and there is so much more to dig out and so many other treasures to discover.

Unfortunately, like at many other sites of ancient civilisations, the Spaniards used part of the volcanic stones of the temple to build Catedral Metropolitana that you can see in the background. 

At the same time the Aztecs dominated Central Mexico, another ancient civilisation - the Incas - ruled from their capital, Machu Picchu, a huge territory covering modern-day Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Colombia and Chile.

However ancient this period may appear to us, there are other fascinating and much more ancient civilisations that existed in the Americas ages before the Aztecs and the Incas. Some of them used to live in Central Mexico several centuries before the Mexica.

Teotihuacán, located only 50 kilometers away from Mexico City, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was the capital of the largest of all ancient Mexican empires which existed between 600 BC and 750 CE.

Centuries after the collapse of this ancient civilization, the Aztecs found the abandoned city with its gorgeous temples and pyramids and adopted it as a pilgrimage site. They believed that all of the gods had sacrificed themselves there to start the sun moving at the beginning of the "fifth world", or fifth cycle of creation and destruction, inhabited by the Aztecs themselves.

It is perfectly aligned with the Pyramid of the Moon and the nearby mountain in the background.

The Temple of Quetzalcóatl - the feathered serpent deity - is beautifully ornate. It is difficult to imagine that it used to be colourful...

It is possible to fly over the site on a hot-air balloon. 

You can admire for hours the various excavation sites, the omnipresent cacti and the exquisite flowers of the flame coral tree native to Mexico. 

It is not possible to climb any of the pyramids anymore but when you see the number of visitors, you will understand that this was the right choice in order to preserve these invaluable treasures of the ancient world!

A little bit after the end of the Teotihuacán empire and before the beginning of the Aztec one, Central Mexico was also home to the Toltecs. Their civilisation flourished between 750 and 1150 CE.

The later Aztecs considered the Toltecs to be their intellectual and cultural predecessors and described Toltec culture as the epitome of civilization. The Toltecs are famous for the gigantic Atlantean warrior sculptures of their capital Tula. 

The most fascinating part is that all ancient civilisations across Mexico influenced each other due to conquest and migration but also thanks to the various trade routes. Stylistic traits associated with Toltec art are present in the famous Mayan site Chichén Itzá, many kilometers away from Tula, on the Yucatán Peninsula…

Mexico is the Maya as well...