Word: teotihuacan
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...majority of the population in a few countries and a large minority in others, and where cultural tensions between ( Indians, mixed-bloods and descendants of the conquistadores have long been severe. Two groups of native peoples from nearly opposite ends of the hemisphere -- Alaska and Peru -- met at the Teotihuacan pyramids outside Mexico City at the end of a month-long march to celebrate "500 years of survival." In the city, thousands of additional demonstrators danced and prayed on the Zocalo, the central square; still others hung a sign reading FIVE CENTURIES OF MASSACRE around the neck of a statue...
Before the Hellenic era, this relationship was one of imitation: The temples of Teotihuacan and the ziggurats of Ur are manmade surrogates for the natural "sacred mountain," the center of a spiritually charged vision of the natural world...
...result is a fascinating picture of an ancient urban center. As described in the National Science Foundation journal Mosaic, the inhabitants of Teotihuacan lived primarily in windowless, one-story apartment compounds that opened onto courtyards. The compounds, which housed about 100 people each, were occasionally organized into barrio-like neighborhoods, but there was no real class separation in Teotihuacan. The researchers have found an almost haphazard mixture of classes and occupations throughout the city...
...researchers have thus far found no conclusive evidence that they had a written language. But there is ample evidence that the ancient city enjoyed considerable prestige. A political and religious center dug up near Guatemala City shows what Pennsylvania State University Archaeologist William Sanders considers "a slavish imitation of Teotihuacan style." Artifacts unearthed in Belize, 700 miles away, show a similar influence...
...city die? Researchers found no signs of epidemic disease or destructive invasion. But they did find signs that suggest the Teotihuacanos themselves burned their temples and some of their other buildings. Excavations revealed that piles of wood had been placed around these structures and set afire. Millon speculates that Teotihuacan's inhabitants may have abandoned the city because it had become "a clumsy giant ... too unwieldy to change with the times." But other archaeologists think that the ancient urbanites may have desecrated the temples and abandoned their city in rage against their gods for permitting a prolonged famine...