a secret tunnel found in mexico may finally solve the mysteries of teotihuacán

7/25/2019 A Secret Tunnel Found in Mexico May Finally Solve the Mysteries of Teotihuacn

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A Secret Tunnel Found in Mexico May Finally Solve the Mysteries ofTeotihuacn

The chance discovery beneath a nearly 2,000-year-old pyramid leads to the heart of a lost

civilization

In the fall of 2003, a heavy rainstorm swept through the ruins of Teotihuacn, the pyramid-studded, pre-Aztec metropolis 30 miles northeast of present-day e!ico "ity# $ig sites sloshed over with water% a torrentof mud and de&ris coursed past rows of souvenir stands at the main entrance# The grounds of the city'scentral courtyard &uc(led and &ro(e# )ne morning, *ergio +mez, an archaeologist with e!ico's ationalInstitute of Anthropology and .istory, arrived at wor( to find a nearly three-foot-wide sin(hole had openedat the foot of a large pyramid (nown as the Temple of the /lumed *erpent, in Teotihuacn's southeast

uadrant#

1y first thought was, hat e!actly am I loo(ing at4'5 +mez told me recently# 1The second was, .owe!actly are we going to fi! this4'5

+mez is wiry and small, with pronounced chee(&ones, nicotine-stained fingers and a helmet of dense &lac(hair that adds a couple of inches to his height# .e has spent the past three decades6almost all of hisprofessional career6wor(ing in and around Teotihuacn, which once, long ago, served as a cosmopolitancenter of the esoamerican world# .e is fond of saying that there are few living humans who (now the placeas intimately as he does#

And as far as he was concerned, there wasn't anything &eneath the Temple of the /lumed *erpent &eyonddirt, fossils and roc(# +mez fetched a flashlight from his truc( and aimed it into the sin(hole# othing7 onlydar(ness# *o he tied a line of heavy rope around his waist and, with several colleagues holding onto the otherend, he descended into the mur(#

+mez came to rest in the middle of what appeared to &e a man-made tunnel# 1I could ma(e out some of the

ceiling,5 he told me, 1&ut the tunnel itself was &loc(ed in &oth directions &y these immense stones#5

In designing Teotihuacn 8pronounced tay-oh-tee-wah-9A.:, the city's architects had arranged the ma;ormonuments on a north-south a!is, with the so-called 1Avenue of the $ead5 lin(ing the largest structure, theTemple of the *un, with the "iudadela, the southeasterly courtyard that housed the Temple of the /lumed*erpent# +mez (new that archaeologists had previously discovered a narrow tunnel underneath the Templeof the *un# .e theorized that he was now loo(ing at a (ind of mirror tunnel, leading to a su&terraneancham&er &eneath the Temple of the /lumed *erpent# If he was correct, it would &e a find of stunningproportions6the type of achievement that can ma(e a career#

1The pro&lem was,5 he told me, 1you can't ;ust dive in and start tearing up earth# , he and a handpic(ed team of some20 archaeologists and wor(ers scanned the earth under the "iudadela, returning every afternoon to uploadthe results to +mez's computers# =y 200?, the digital map was complete#

As +mez had suspected, the tunnel ran appro!imately 330 feet from the "iudadela to the center of theTemple of the /lumed *erpent# The hole that had appeared during the 2003 storms was not the actualentrance% that lay a few yards &ac(, and it had apparently &een intentionally sealed with large &oulders nearly2,000 years ago# hatever was inside that tunnel, +mez thought to himself, was meant to stay hiddenforever#

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Teotihuacn has long stood as the greatest of esoamerican mysteries7 the site of a colossal and influentialculture a&out which frustratingly little is understood, from the conditions of its rise to the circumstances ofits collapse to its actual name# Teotihuacn translates as 1the place where men &ecome gods5 in ahuatl, thelanguage of the Aztecs, who li(ely found the ruins of the deserted city sometime in the 300s, centuries afterits a&andonment, and concluded that a powerful ur-culture6an ancestor of theirs6must have once residedin its vast temples#

The city lies in a &asin at the southernmost edge of the e!ican /lateau, an undulating landmass that formsthe spine of modern-day e!ico# Inside the &asin the climate is mild, the land riven &y streams and rivers6ideal conditions for farming and raising livestoc(#

Teotihuacn itself was li(ely settled as early as >00 =#"#, &ut it was only around A#$# 00, an era of ro&ustpopulation growth and increased ur&anization in esoamerica, that the metropolis as we (now it, with itswide &oulevards and monumental pyramids, was &uilt# *ome historians have theorized that its founders wererefugees driven north &y the eruption of a volcano# )thers have speculated that they were Totonacs, a tri&efrom the east#

hatever the case, the Teotihuacanos, as they are now (nown, proved themselves to &e s(illed ur&anplanners# They &uilt stone-sided canals to reroute the *an Buan Civer directly under the Avenue of the $ead,and set a&out constructing the pyramids that would form the city's core7 the Temple of the /lumed *erpent,the even larger >D-foot-tall Temple of the oon and the &ul(y, s(y-o&scuring 23-foot-tall Temple of the*un#

"lemency "oggins, a professor emerita of archaeology and art history at =oston Eniversity, has suggestedthat the city was designed as a physical manifestation of its founders' creation myth# 1ot only was

Teotihuacn laid out in a measured rectangular grid, &ut the pattern was oriented to the movement of the sun,which was &orn there,5 "oggins has written# *he is far from the only historian to see the city as large-scalemetaphor# ichael "oe, an archaeologist at 00, Teotihuacn had &ecome the most powerful and influential city in the region# Cesidentialneigh&orhoods sprang up in concentric circles around the city center, eventually comprising thousands of


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individual family dwellings, not dissimilar to single-story apartments, that together may have housed200,000 people#

Cecent fieldwor( &y scholars li(e $avid "ar&allo, of =oston Eniversity, has revealed the sheer diversity ofthe citizenry of Teotihuacn7 Budging &y artifacts and paintings found inside surviving structures, residentscame to Teotihuacn from as far afield as "hiapas and the


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It was here, +mez hoped, that he'd ma(e his &iggest find yet#

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I met +mez late last year, on a smoldering afternoon# .e was smo(ing a cigarette and drin(ing coffee out ofa foam cup# Tides of tourists swept to and fro over the grass of the "iudadela6I heard scraps of Italian,

Cussian, Nrench# An Asian couple stopped to peer in at +mez and his team as if they were tigers at a zoo#+mez loo(ed &ac( stonily, the cigarette hanging off his &ottom lip#

+mez told me a&out the wor( his team was doing to study the D?,000 or so artifacts they had already found,each of which needed to &e carefully cataloged, analyzed and, when possi&le, restored# 1I would estimatethat we're only a&out 0 percent through the process,5 he said#

The restoration operation is set up in a cluster of &uildings not far from the "iudadela# In one room, a youngman was s(etching artifacts and noting where in the tunnel the o&;ects had &een found# e!t door, a handfulof conservators sat at a &anuet-style ta&le, &ent over an array of pottery# The air smelled sharply of acetoneand alcohol, a mi!ture used to remove contaminants from the artifacts#

1It might ta(e you months ;ust to finish a single large piece,5 Lania +arcOa, a technician from e!ico "ity,told me# *he was using a syringe primed with acetone to clean a particularly tiny crac(# 1=ut some of theother o&;ects are remar(a&ly well preserved7 They were &uried carefully#5 *he recalled that not long ago, shefound a powdery yellow su&stance at the &ottom of a ;ar# It was corn, it turned out6,G00-year-old corn#

/assing through a la& where wood recovered from the tunnel was &eing carefully treated in chemical &aths,we stepped into the storeroom# 1This is where we (eep the fully restored artifacts,5 +mez said# There was a

statue of a coiled ;aguar, poised to pounce, and a collection of flawless o&sidian (nives# The material for theweapons had pro&a&ly &een &rought in from the /achuca region of e!ico and carved in Teotihuacn &ymaster craftspeople# +mez held out a (nife for me to hold% it was marvelously light# 1hat a society, no45he e!claimed# 1That could create something as &eautiful and powerful as that#5

In the canvas tent erected over the entrance to the tunnel, +mez's team had installed a ladder that led downinto the earth6a wo&&ly thing fastened to the top platform with frayed twine# I descended carefully, footover foot, the &rim of my hard hat slipping over my eyes# In the tunnel it was damp and cold, li(e a grave# To

get anywhere, you had to wal( on your haunches, turning to the side when the passage narrowed# Asprotection against cave-ins, +mez's wor(men had installed several dozen feet of scaffolding6the earthhere is unsta&le, and earthua(es are common# *o far, there had &een two partial collapses% no one had &eenhurt# *till, it was hard not to feel a shiver of taphopho&ia#

Through the middle of Teotihuacn studies runs a division li(e a fault line, separating those who &elieve thatthe city was ruled &y an all-powerful and violent (ing and those who argue that it was governed &y a councilof elite families or otherwise &ound groups, vying over time for relative influence, arising from the

cosmopolitan nature of the city itself# The first camp, which includes e!perts li(e *a&uro *ugiyama, hasprecedent on its side6the aya, for instance, are famous for their warli(e (ings6&ut unli(e ayan cities,

where rulers had their visages festooned on &uildings and where they were &uried in opulent tom&s,Teotihuacn has offered up no such decorations, nor tom&s#

Initially, much of the &uzz surrounding the tunnel &eneath the Temple of the /lumed *erpent centered on thepossi&ility that +mez and his colleagues might finally locate one such tom&, and there&y solve one of thecity's most fundamental enduring mysteries# +mez himself has entertained the idea# =ut as we clam&eredthrough the tunnel, he laid out a hypothesis that seemed to stem more directly from the mythologicalreadings of the city laid out &y scholars li(e "lemency "oggins and ichael "oe#

Nifty feet in, we stopped at a small inlet carved into the wall# ot long &efore, +mez and his colleagues had

discovered traces of mercury in the tunnel, which +mez &elieved served as sym&olic representations ofwater, as well as the mineral pyrite, which was em&edded in the roc( &y hand# In semi-dar(ness, +meze!plained, the shards of pyrite emit a thro&&ing, metallic glow# To demonstrate, he unscrewed the nearest


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light &ul The pyrite came to life, li(e a distant gala!y# It was possi&le, in that moment, to imagine what thetunnel's designers might have felt more than a thousand years ago7 >0 feet underground, they'd replicated thee!perience of standing amid the stars#

If, +mez suggested, it was true that the layout of the city proper was meant to stand in for the universe andits creation, might the tunnel, &eneath the temple devoted to an all-encompassing aueous past, represent aworld outside of time, an underworld or a world &efore, not the world of the living &ut of the dead4 Ep

a&ove, there was the Temple of the *un and the eternal day# $own &elow, the stars6not of this earth6andthe deepest night#

I followed +mez down a short ramp and into the cross-shaped cham&er directly under the heart of theTemple of the /lumed *erpent# Nour archaeologists were (neeling in the dirt, &rushes and thin-&laded trowelsin hand# A near&y &oom&o! &lared Kady +aga#

+mez told me he had not &een prepared for the sheer diversity of the o&;ects he encountered in thefarthermost reaches of the tunnel7 nec(laces, with the string intact# =o!es of &eetle wings# Baguar &ones#=alls of am&er# And perhaps most intriguingly, a pair of finely carved &lac( stone statues, each facing thewall opposite to the entryway of the cham&er#

riting in the late FF0s, "oggins speculated that religious tradition at Teotihuacn would have &een1perpetuated in the lin(ed repetition of ritual,5 li(ely on the part of a priesthood# That ritual, "oggins wenton, 1would have concerned the "reation, Teotihuacn's role in it, and pro&a&ly also the &irthPemergence ofthe Teotihuacn people from a cave56a deep and dar( hole in the earth#

+mez gestured at the area where the twin figures once stood# 1

a secret tunnel found in mexico may finally solve the mysteries of teotihuacán

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