Two things set off the Early from the Late Classic: first,
the strong Izapan element still discernible in Early Classic Maya culture, and
secondly, the appearance in the middle part of the Early Classic of powerful
waves of influence, and almost certainly invaders themselves, from the site of
Teotihuacan in central Mexico. This city was founded in the first century BC in
a small but fertile valley opening onto the northeast side of the Valley of
Mexico. On the eve of its destruction at the hands of unknown peoples, at the
end of the sixth or beginning of the seventh century AD, it covered an area of
over 5 sq. miles (13 sq. km) and may have had, according to George Cowgill, a
preeminent expert on the site, a population of some 85,000 people living in
over 2,300 apartment compounds. To fill it, Teotihuacan’s ruthless early rulers
virtually depopulated smaller towns and villages in the Valley of Mexico. It
was, in short, the greatest city ever seen in the Pre-Columbian New World.
Teotihuacan is noted for the regularity of its two crisscrossing
great avenues, for its Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, and for the delicacy and
sophistication of the paintings which graced the walls of its luxurious
palaces. In these murals and elsewhere, the art of the great city is permeated
with war symbolism, and there can be little doubt that war and conquest were
major concerns to its rulers. Teotihuacan fighting men were armed with
atlatl-propelled darts and rectangular shields, and bore round, decorated,
pyrite mosaic mirrors on their backs; with their eyes sometimes partly hidden
by white shell “goggles,” and their feather headdresses, they must have been
terrifying figures to their opponents.
At the very heart of the city, facing the main north–south
avenue, is the massive Ciudadela (“citadel”), in all likelihood the compound
housing the royal palace. Within the Ciudadela itself is the stepped,
stone-faced temple-pyramid known as the Temple of the Feathered Serpent (TFS),
one of the single most important buildings of ancient Mesoamerica, and
apparently well known to the distant Maya right through the end of the Classic.
When the TFS was dedicated c. AD 200, at least 200 individuals were sacrificed
in its honor. Study of their bone chemistry reveals that not a few are certain
to have been foreigners. All were attired as Teotihuacan warriors, with
obsidian-tipped darts and back mirrors, and some had collars strung with
imitation human jawbones.
On the facade and balustrades of the TFS are multiple
figures of the Feathered Serpent, an early form of the later Aztec god
Quetzalcoatl (patron god of the priesthood) and a figure that may, according to
Karl Taube, have originated among the Maya. Alternating with these figures is
the head of another supernatural ophidian, with retroussé snout covered with
rectangular platelets representing jade, and cut shell goggles placed in front
of a stylized headdress in the shape of the Mexican sign for “year.” Taube has
conclusively demonstrated this to be a War Serpent, a potent symbol wherever
Teotihuacan influence was felt in Mesoamerica – and, in fact, long after the
fall of Teotihuacan. Such martial symbolism extended even to the Teotihuacan
prototype of the rain deity Tlaloc who, fitted with his characteristic
“goggles” and year-sign, also functioned as a war god.
This mighty city held dominion over large parts of Mexico in
the Early Classic as the center of a military and commercial empire that may
have been greater than that of the much later Aztec. Drawing upon historical
data on the Aztecs, ethnohistorian Ross Hassig has suggested that Mesoamerican
“empires” such as Teotihuacan’s were probably not organized along Roman lines,
which totally replaced local administrations by the imperial power; rather,
they were “hegemonic,” in the sense that conquered bureaucracies were largely
in place, but controlled and taxed through the constant threat of the
overwhelming military force which could have been unleashed against them at any
time. Thus, we can expect a good deal of local cultural continuity even in
those regions taken over by the great city; but in the case of the lowland
Maya, we shall also see outright interference in dynastic matters, with
profound implications for the course of Maya history.
That the Teotihuacan empire prefigured that of the Aztecs is
vividly attested at the site of Los Horcones, Chiapas, Mexico, studied by
Claudia García-Des Lauriers of California State Polytechnic, Pomona. Situated
near a spectacular hill, the city lies on the very edge of the great
chocolate-producing area known to the Aztecs as the Xoconochco. The southern
part of Los Horcones is a dead ringer for the complex composed of the Pyramid
of the Moon and the Avenue of the Dead at Teotihuacan, and artifacts and
monuments point to a direct Teotihuacan presence in the region. It is hard to believe
that the Aztecs were not the imitators here, and that Teotihuacan was the first
to interest itself in the cacao plantations and trade routes of the region. The
contact did not stop there, but extended to what may be a Teotihuacan colony at
Montana, Guatemala. This settlement, surrounded by others like it within a 3
mile (5 km) radius, is endowed with magnificent incense burners, portrait
figurines, and an enigmatic square object known to specialists as candeleros or
“candle holders,” though their function is not known. And Montana was not
alone. In 1969 tractors plowing the fields in the Tiquisate region of the
Pacific coastal plain of Guatemala, an area located southwest of Lake Atitlan
that is covered with ancient (and untested) mounds, unearthed rich tombs and
caches containing a total of over 1,000 ceramic objects. These have been
examined by Nicholas Hellmuth of the Foundation for Latin American
Archaeological Research; the collection consists of elaborate two-piece censers
(according to Karl Taube symbolizing the souls of dead warriors), slab-legged
tripod cylinders, hollow mold-made figures, and other objects, all in
Teotihuacan style. Numerous finds of fired clay molds suggest that these were
mass-produced from Teotihuacan prototypes by military-merchant groups intruding
from central Mexico during the last half of the Early Classic.
Contacts must have been intense and conducted at the highest
levels. Taube has detected Maya-style ceramics at Teotihuacan, some made
locally, perhaps in an ethnic enclave at the city. Legible Maya glyphs from
murals in the Tetitla apartment compound at Teotihuacan attest to royal names
and rituals of god-impersonation. Very likely, these refer not to mere
craftsmen brought from the Maya region, but to dynastic elites. Yet the
movement of these people must have been complex. Under the immense Pyramid of
the Moon, Saburo Sugiyama and colleagues discovered a burial with three bodies,
dating to AD 350–400, accompanied by carved jades and a seated, Maya-like
figure of greenstone. The positioning of this figure and the bodies nearby, all
buried upright with crossed legs, resembles patterns in tombs at Kaminaljuyu in
Highland Guatemala; the date, too, is close to a period of marked contact
between Tikal and Teotihuacan-related people. Bone chemistry suggests that at
least one of the occupants of the tomb came from the Maya region, but spent
much of his life at this important Mexican city.
