The Ancients - Pyramid of the Sun

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

The Pyramid of the Sun is ancient America’s Great Pyramid of Giza. Built in the legendary city of Teotihuacán, and given its name by the Aztecs, this magnificent step pyramid is another great wonder of the ancient world. But who built it? And what for? In today’s episode of The Ancients Tristan Hughes is joined by Annabeth Headrick, an expert on all things Teotihuacán to explore and uncover the mysteries that surround this massive Mesoamerican monument. Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘ANCIENTS’. https://historyhit.com/subscriptionVote for The Ancients in the Listeners Choice category of British Podcast Awards here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Now, when someone mentions pyramids, your mind will probably instantly think of the great monuments that define ancient Egypt today. Perhaps the Great Pyramid of Giza on the Giza Plateau, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Or maybe the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara.

Perhaps even the fascinating Bent Pyramid. But the Egyptians, they weren't the only great pyramid builders in antiquity. Thousands of miles to the west across the Atlantic Ocean at the same time that Rome was building some of its great structures such as the Mausoleum of Augustus, the Colosseum. At about roughly the same time, other ancient peoples in Mesoamerica were building impressive pyramids to dominate their settlements, with one of the most impressive being found at the ancient city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico, the Pyramid of the Sun. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we are talking about another great wonder of the ancient

world, the massive Mesoamerican monument that is the Pyramid of the Sun. Now our guest today is an ancient legend, Dr. Annabeth Hedrick, an expert on Tehutahua Khan and its archaeology. Annabeth, she's been on the podcast before to talk about Tehutahua Khan's wider story and about another great Mesoamerican wonder, Chichen Itza. Definitely also check out those episodes. They are great and available to listen to in the Ancients Archive. Now, Annabeth, she's back to talk all things the Pyramid of the Sun. I really do hope you enjoy. Annabeth, what a pleasure. Great to have you back on the podcast.

I always love talking with you. You're just so engaged in archaeology all over the world. Well, you're very kind. And actually, the last time we were chatting, we were talking in person out in Saudi Arabia, of all places, for a conference out there. And we had the pleasure of seeing each other for the first time a few months back. But now we are doing this again remotely. We are either side of the Atlantic Ocean. But we are talking about something I know very close to your heart, that ancient great city of Teotihuacan and this massive monument, the Pyramid of the Sun. Now, this has to be surely one of the most extraordinary monuments to survive from Mesoamerica. And that is saying something in itself. Yeah, it's just so big. And the other thing that's fascinating is it's largely a single

phase construction. It's not something that was built over time. Like a lot of pyramids in Mesoamerica, they built a little one and a bigger one and a bigger one like Russian nesting dolls, but this was built all in one big time. And is it also because of its size, is that one of the things we really should talk about straight away? Is it one of the biggest surviving structures, not just in Mesoamerica, but throughout the whole of the ancient world? Yeah, it's the largest single phase construction in Mesoamerica. We always have, there's a bit of a fight between the people that work at Touloula

because their pyramid ultimately was larger, but it was built in stages and bumps and lumps and all over the place. So it's a little more confusing. But this one is right after the Great Pyramid at Khufu in Giza, the Great Pyramid there. So we can go toe-to-toe with Egyptian archaeologists with the Pyramid of the Sun. Well, let's begin with an easy question. What is the Pyramid of the Sun? The Pyramid of the Sun is this massive pyramid at the city of Teotihuacan. It faces to the west. It has probably had stairs on the west, but they're kind of messed up. And we can talk about the questionable archaeology that the poor thing has had to

encounter. But it's this huge monument in the midst of one of the largest cities of Mesoamerica. I often say that, you know, the Maya had very tall pyramids. They were very, very big, but they're tall and skinny, you know, kind of thing. And the Pyramid of the Sun is just this massive, hulking pyramid. And I imagine that it's sort of like somebody that's in a small city that, you know, you have a few skyscrapers, but then you go to the Teotihuacan and you saw the Pyramid of the Sun, you're like, oh my gosh, we don't have anything. It's more like going to New York City, right? And you see what a big city really is like. With its placement in this great ancient city, was the pyramid, was it situated, was it built right at the heart of Teotihuacan?

Well, you know, it's funny because lately some people have been arguing that there's three big pyramids at Teotihuacan. There's the Pyramid of the Moon, the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, and the Pyramid of the Sun. And things changed over time. The Moon, the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, and the Pyramid of the Sun. And things changed over time. The Temple of the Feathered Serpent's really at the middle of the city because we have a three-mile-long road, and it's right there in the middle. But it seems to have developed a little bit later. The Pyramid of the Sun, interestingly, is the largest big pyramid at the site. It was built somewhere between 1 to 100

common era. And at that point, the Pyramid of the Moon was around, but it was much smaller. It was a very modest pyramid. And the Pyramid of the Sun was this big, massive thing. So I do think, and lots of people think, that it was symbolically this important center of the city. It was an important place for ritual at the city. Later on, the city developed and it begins, it has this north-south axis, and you walk straight towards the Pyramid of the Moon, and it became another center. But I don't think the Pyramid of the Sun ever lost its primacy for very, very important rituals that happened there. And also the question of when, Annabeth, do we know from archaeology, from science,

do we have an idea as to when this pyramid was constructed at Tehutahuaqan? Yeah, so there was some smaller, there seems to be a smaller little tiny structure underneath this the pyramid and that was maybe about 100 before common era to one common era but then this huge massive pyramid was built all at one time between one to 100 common era and they just pulled that thing up and used a bunch of fill from all over the city and it's uncommon to build things in one stage like that. I mean, that's amazing, that time frame. So between 1 and 100 CE or AD. So to think at perhaps exactly the same time as, let's say, in Rome, the Colosseum was being built, the other side of the Atlantic, the other side, they are building this massive pyramid. That is

absolutely extraordinary and it also kind of begs the question annabeth when you look at this with other great structures of ancient history let's say the mediterranean world or even the great pyramid of giza we have sometimes some written sources surviving describing it and how it's believed it was constructed when looking at source material if we're trying to understand more about the Pyramid of the Sun, do we have any written sources at all, or is it just archaeology that we have to use? I would say just archaeology. We have some writing at Teotihuacan, but a lot of it looks like it might be nouns and not sentences,

and so it's harder to decipher in that context. And interestingly, for some of the meaning of the temple, there's some writing that happened in the Maya site of Copan that tells us maybe about the function, but nothing about why it was built originally in that material. So it really is, to learn more about it, it's stuff still coming out of the ground, it's analyzing the materials themselves. So there's presumably there's still so much more to learn about this structure as the years go on. Yeah. There was an early archaeology where they took a tunnel through the pyramid and tried to understand stages. And that's where they got information

about a very small, modest, tiny structure underneath it. And they realized that it was a single phase construction. There's some people that still think there's a wall that seems to be in there, but it hasn't been investigated very well. And some people still think there's a tomb inside there. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, I think it's, we always think we're going to find the tomb of a king at Teotihuacan. And I'm part of a club that thinks the burials were done differently at Teotihuacan. But if they find one, that would be wonderful too. Well, we're going to explore all of that, Annabeth. But one other question.

If we don't have written material surviving for learning about this massive structure, how does it get the name Pyramid of the Sun? So the name really comes from the Aztec. And we have to remember that the Aztec were a thousand years after Teotihuacan. And so those names can sometimes be very silly. They can be just these apocryphal things. In this case, I think it really is the Pyramid of the Sun. I think that there was probably oral history that survived the collapse of the site and went down through many, many generations of people. It's just like the avenue that it's on is called the Avenue of the Dead. And I've argued that that's probably an accurate name, that there

were associations with deceased ancestors along that avenue. And so I do think that somehow this name survived those many, many generations. Well, let's go a thousand years back before the Aztecs and explore the archaeology itself before we explore the potential purpose and how it's related to places like that Avenue of the Dead, as you've hinted at, and other pyramids at Teotihuacan, and everyday life, of course. But at that time that the pyramid is about to be constructed, let's say the beginning of the first century AD or CE, Annabeth, describe Teotihuacan to us. What do we know about the city at this time and its prominence on the Mesoamerican stage?

Well, you know, it's interesting. Teotihuacan, in some ways, may have been a reflection of some really severe volcanic activity. There's some sites that predate it that were covered up by volcanic material, some pretty severe things that caused some population moves. But Teotihuacan also was very much people that were looking for economic resources. And so you have a bunch of people that were probably also moving there for financial success in that context. It has a rich sources of obsidian and obsidian was what they used instead of iron, for instance. And so they in many ways seem to have controlled the obsidian market. And they had the finest obsidian. It's like clear glass.

It's just beautiful. Some obsidian's kind of what we call sugary. It's bumpy and lumpy inside. But the Tentocon obsidian was just beautiful. So it's not at the site. It's near the site. But they're controlling this and then refining it and moving it throughout all of Mesoamerica. It also has good trade routes to the Gulf Coast.

It has good trade routes to the south. There used to be a lake in the basin of Mexico that could get resources from there. And then there's more work, which we don't understand as much, but it's going to be coming out sooner. There's also great resources to the north of Mesoamerica, which is an area that's largely less explored there. And so it was an advantageous place for a bunch of people that were engaged in trade. And this is interesting, because I remember our first ever chat about Tehutahuaqan, part of

our Ancient America series almost two years ago now. But was this something that led people to believe at one stage that actually the whole society of Teotihuacan, if it's focused on trade, was actually a very peaceful society? However, there might be quite big flaws in that theory and that maybe wishful thinking there almost. Yeah. The thing about trade in Mesoamerica is trade's always involved with warfare. And some of this we know from the Aztec, but it matches when we look at the archaeology at Teotihuacan. So in the Pyramid of the Moon, for instance, we find a burial that shows sacrificial victim. And it also shows that a lot of military weapons in there. And that's when the Pyramid of the Moon grew larger. And so we know that there was military

activity. Down in the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, we have all these people dressed like warriors that are sacrificed underneath that pyramid. And what it seems to be is we have these merchant traders that would go out and take their goods, whether it be ceramics or obsidian or whatever it is. And they always had to have a contention of the military with them because it's dangerous if you're carrying lots of good things that other people want you know you're bringing back chocolate for instance from the maya area people are going to want to steal that think about the highway robbery and such that you know happened back in robin hood's day right and all of those stories and so they always had a military contingent with them.

We also know that Teotihuacan had military outposts that became permanent places where they sent people down to live in the Maya area and those become other communities that they had Teotihuacanos living down there and then they became some other culture, right? Because they married local women and such like that and they were gaining access to the resources that they didn't have. They didn't have jaguar

skins and they didn't have chocolate and they didn't have the fabulous green feathers that they wanted from the Maya area. And so in getting that, you know, exchange back and forth, they always had a military contingent down there to protect their rights and their goods. Well, I'll tell you what, Annabeth, exporting obsidian and importing chocolate, that seems like a pretty good deal to me. Yeah, I'd rather have the chocolate too. But you also mentioned something really interesting there in passing, which is you mentioned the Mayan world and Teotihuacanos. So that also makes me want to

ask straight away about the people who lived in Teotihuacan, who built the Pyramid of the Sun. Do we know who exactly they were, what culture almost they belonged to? You know, A, we wish we could read the language because then we would know what they spoke, which is what we tend to, we group people by the language they speak, but we don't know yet what that language is. And then I would also say we do have lots of evidence that it was a multicultural group. We have some areas that are clearly people that were from the Gulf Coast. They have these sort of round houses that are unusual at Teotihuacan, but maybe not unusual, right? Because it was a multicultural society. We have people from Oaxaca, which is over on the other coast that are living at Teotihuacan. And I think

it was a place that attracted people that wanted opportunity. And they moved there and cooperated in many ways for the success of the whole. Let's explore the pyramid itself now. And Annabeth, one thing I always love exploring with these great wonders of antiquity are the materials used to build them. What are the main materials used to construct the Pyramid of the Sun? If I look at images of it today, it looks quite dark, kind of granite almost like material. What do we know about that building material? Right. In building Mesoamerican pyramids, they tend to take fill from like trash, right, from other places. And they put it sort of in bins or something, you know, and then you build these things out of old ceramics and old refuse and stuff.

That's what's inside of these things. It's interesting when this was excavated, they took out the outer layer of this pyramid because they thought they would find a nicer, cleaner, prettier pyramid on the inside. But the problem was there wasn't a nicer, cleaner pyramid on the inside. And so they left it exposed. And some of the materials were kind of soft and not very strong, you know, adobe materials and such like that. And because of that, it started to really fall apart. And so the archaeologists really put concrete on the outside of this thing. And it's kind of a mess.

And so we don't quite understand, you know, the whole construction of it because of this problem. Right, but that's something good to clarify straight away. Because the pyramid facade that you can see today that material is that not the original material for some 2000 right so there was an archaeologist and i don't want to point fingers too much because you know the guy was excavating in 1906 and lots of people did really poor archaeology back then. His name was Leonardo Batres, and Batres used dynamite from what we understand to excavate the pyramid. And so that's not kind of what we do today. We prefer to go slow and methodical with that. And so in that, we can actually see that he removed

about four meters of material. So when you visit the site, go look at the base of the pyramid, and you can actually see a line where there's little lumps, right, where you can see where the original outer surface of the pyramid was. But, you know, four meters is a lot to take off of that pyramid. But still, I know, of course, that is a massive problem that you have to try to learn more about the construction of the pyramid itself today. But even with the material that has been preserved from 2000 years ago in the making of that pyramid, as you mentioned,

it seems to be going to be trash and stuff like that. But do we know much more about that trash? Do we know if it was all kind of collected from a particular place that they wanted the same kind of material throughout? Do we know much about how it was all kind of collected from a particular place, that they wanted the same kind of material throughout? Do we know much about how it was all kind of placed and put together to form that pyramid? The archaeology is not particularly clear on all of that. But what we can say is after they built it, they did cover it in something that's called Teotihuacan concrete, which is not quite the same, you know, when you think about the Romans and such. And Teotihuacan is on a volcanic area. Unlike the places that people ran away from moving to Teotihuacan, there is a volcano at Teotihuacan, but it's very much dormant. And it was dormant when they were there. But nevertheless, they have a lot of volcanic rock

underneath the site. And so they took the volcanic rock, they mixed it with sand and earth, and then they put a little lime plaster in that too. And then they made this Teotihuacan concrete. But it's mostly volcanic rock, sand, and earth, and covered that hang up. Then what they would do is structures at Teotihuacan were covered in lime plaster. is structures at Teotihuacan were covered in lime plaster. But the lime plaster is particularly interesting because it takes a lot, a lot of wood fuel to burn down limestone. So you pile up limestone and then you burn it with wood.

But the thing about Teotihuacan is it doesn't have limestone, nor does it have much wood. There's not a lot of trees in that area. So in both cases, they're importing the lime powder from somewhere else and probably 30 to 40 kilometers away. But what's interesting is they have a lot of it. There's a lot of lime plaster all over Teotihuacan, which talks about its economic success, that they could bring this stuff, have people carry it on their backs into the site and cover up these pyramids with this massive amount of lime plaster. So even though, you know, sometimes that archaeology surviving

is murky, we should still, with evidence like you said, with the Teotihuacan concrete and the materials, we should imagine back when this pyramid was being constructed, there would have been a massive logistics network ongoing, you know, for kilometers away to bring in the materials, lots of manpower, I'm presuming, to construct this monumental building, which seems to have been so important for the people. Yes, exactly. And we don't really have evidence who those people were, you know, we don't have have evidence who those people were. We don't have records if there was slavery or such. But I mean, I do tend to think that it's probably more likely that this was a community effort. These were something that people believed in and they wanted

to build it themselves. Can we also talk a bit about the mathematics behind it? And of course, you know, Mayan mathematics is often thrown about and astrology and so on and so forth. With the design of the Pyramid of the Sun, and once again, we'll mention, as you say, it's a bit difficult now with the archaeology that is there to completely deduce some of this stuff. But from what has survived of that pyramid, do we get a sense of the advanced mathematics of these people, of the angles? Is it very precisely aligned or geometrically shaped? What do we know about that part of the pyramid story? I mean, it's a lovely square structure, right? Right now it's 216 meters by 216 meters.

So you get that kind of feeling for that. And it's also 63 meters high. So the base of it is comparable to the pyramid in Giza. What's different is it's not as high. You know, the angle is lower in that context. So when we look at this pyramid, the total volume was like 1,175,000 cubic meters. I mean, it's massive. It's just, it's a big structure. It was later expanded to about 223 meters on each side in that context. So as far as mathematics, there is a scholar that

argues that there's something called the Teotihuacan system where they had a standard of measure. Teotihuacan system where they had a standard of measure. I'm not personally as convinced of that standard of measure, but we do have images in Mesoamerica that tell us about how they made things with right angles, and it has to do with ropes. So when you would measure your cornfield, you take ropes and you stretch them and you fold them in different ways. And you can actually get a perfectly square cornfield by just using ropes to measure. And the reason I say that is there's manuscripts that come out of Oaxaca where they talk about the beginning of the world. And they have these ropes and they're measuring the cosmos and they're measuring the world and creating the world with these ropes. And it's not so much mathematics as you can get right angles,

you can get a perfect triangle, you can get all of these things by using a rope and measuring and folding. And even in the great manuscript of the Maya, they talk about the beginning of the world and it's called the folding, the measuring. and so it's ropes that are the basis for this kind of thing and we have evidence of this all over mesoamerica and i would be more convinced that that's the system that they were using it to to a con it's amazing to think of that way or to imagine as they were building it and using maybe various types of contraptions they say pulleys or cranes or anything like that as you said the archaeologists probably aren't clear on that unless do we have any sense idea annabeth if they had any kind of contraptions to help them construct this pyramid yeah i'm very aware of the neat things that have been found in egypt you know

about ramps and different things but we don't have any of that we don't have any of that information alas but still really interesting to imagine was Tetiru Khan, architects overlooking the construction of this pyramid. One thing that we do find some sites in Mesoamerica, sometimes you find little miniature temples. One wonders if those were models for the architects and such like that. And some people have suggested that so that's a possibility and do we have this feels like another difficult question but i you know the ancients is

the place where we ask the difficult questions stuff like this do you have any idea regarding the kind of nature of society at ted to work on whether something like this would have been ordered by a pharaoh-like figure by a king or a chieftain and then becomes a communal project as you've hinted at or is that once again in the avenues of theory? It's in theory and I have mine and there's other people that disagree with me. I think this was a place that had rulers of a sort. I think it wasn't as dominant as you might see in the Maya area. In Maya, you get pyramids put up and you have kings inside of them, you know, their burials. And you have stela that are put up with their portraits. And we don't have quite that same system. I think it did to Akan, it was a system where they shared power. I do believe that there were rulers at the site. And instead of burying themselves inside of pyramids, they buried

themselves in mortuary bundles. So we find the masks of those mortuary bundles. They're stone masks, but we don't necessarily find the kind of elaborate tombs. But because this was a cooperative society, what you have is the rulers sharing power with the merchants, sharing power with the warriors, and this kind of system of sharing how governance was made. I think there were probably councils. I think there were systems where decisions were made more in a collective way than they were in other places in Mesoamerica. But I do believe that there is some possibility that we had rulers, but it's just harder to find those bodies. In fact, some of those rulers may have originally been buried under the Pyramid of the Sun, but at some point they decided to take them out and

move them elsewhere, probably to the Avenue of the Dead. let's go full circle and go something you've mentioned in passing earlier in this chat so there is believed to have been other structures beneath the Pyramid of the Sun, which this massive structure almost was built on top of. Yeah, there's a small platform that we don't know much about. But the thing we haven't talked about is this tunnel or cave that's underneath the Pyramid of the Sun. And some people say, oh, you know, there's no natural caves at Teotihuacan, so we can't call this a cave. It's a symbolic cave. I think they built it themselves.

They may have used material from that cave for building materials and such. But what you have underneath the Pyramid of the Sun is a shaft that goes quite a long way, almost to the center of the pyramid. And it has four lobes on it. So imagine a long, snaky thing it has four lobes on it. So imagine a long snaky thing with these four lobes at the end. But what's interesting about this is, again, there's some questionable archaeology that there may have been more information, but we don't have very good understanding of the archaeology of the people that first entered that cave. But there are a series of walls that were built blocking that cave off. This has always intrigued me because we do have these stone masks at Teotihuacan

that suggest that they buried elite people in mortuary bundles. So they would wrap the body in a fetal position and put a mask on there so it had a face, and you keep them around. You keep your ancestors around so that you can see them. But there's also information that those mortuary bundles in some places in Mesoamerica were put in caves, that that was the proper place to put them. And if you think about the Pyramid of the Sun being blocked off, you might have had a situation where elites were placed in and then it was blocked. Another elite is blocked. And at some point they decided to remove those mortuary bundles and take them out. Can I prove this a hundred percent? No, but it is, I think there's a lot of

evidence that's, you know, supporting evidence around that, that it's a high possibility that that's what it was. Well, we love theories on the ancients. And from the interior, Annabeth, let's head to the exterior of the pyramid. Annabeth, talk to me about the massive staircase on this pyramid and also the many levels. Because from what you see today, it's not almost a true pyramid like the Pyramid of Giza. It's a step pyramid. Yeah, and most pyramids in Mesoamerica are step pyramids, although this one has big, fat steps compared to other places. Right now it has five steps,

but it might have really only had four steps originally in that context. Again, Batres removed so much material that we think the fifth step was probably kind of fantasy that was put into there. What's interesting is if you are on the Pyramid of the Moon and you look south, the Pyramid of the Sun, those steps actually mirror a mountain that's to the south. It's a mountain called Cerro Palachique or Mount Palachique. mountain called Cerro Patlachique, or Mount Patlachique. And that, what we have is the pyramid of the moon is actually representing Patlachique. It's a doppelganger, right? And so those steps that you see there actually mirror the steps that are on the mountain to the south. And so it's very much built into nature. It reflects nature.

It builds into nature. It's in harmony with its surroundings in that way. As for those steps, so when you go to the pyramid now, there's two steps that kind of, so you're on the western facade, and there's two staircases that go up on either side, and then they join in the middle. There's not one other pyramid in Mesoamerica that's quite like that. The Aztec did have two staircases on theirs, but I think it's a real problem. I suspect that there was one staircase, but remember he removed four meters of material and so the original staircases are gone. There's even some evidence that he may have

put those staircases on some kind of a drainage system or something that he found inside the pyramid. And it's murky. And so that's unclear with that. But some people have written about that. But it's really a mess as to what the original staircase was. If you look at the Pyramid of the Moon, it has just the one staircase. So it's really problematic to have the double staircase that becomes one staircase. It's a little weird. We'll get on a bit more into the Pyramid of the Moon in a bit, but I think we need to kind of go up to the top of the staircase that I believe people can do today. What was at the top of the Pyramid of the Sun?

So there had to be a temple up there. But right now, it's a big blob with concrete poured all over it. It's a mess in that context. So there would have been a temple. And we do have some context of what temples look like because they painted them in their murals. And it may have been sort of a single temple that had a door facing again to the west and it may have even had a somewhat perishable roof on top of it they tended to put wood across the roof and then they would have stone walls around the sides of it and but what's interesting too is there was when they did excavate recently on top of the pyramid, they found a looter's trench. When I'm talking about a looter's trench, this might have been a looter's trench even back

in ancient times. And up there, they found some rather large greenish stone stela, but they're plain, so they don't have anything on there. And more interestingly, what they found is a really massive sculpture of a guy that the Aztecs called Huehueteotl, or the old fire god. And it's a guy that's kind of hunched over, and he's old, and he has his teeth sticking out, and he has a wrinkled face. And on his shoulders and his back, he's seated on his bum, but then he's on his shoulders and his back, he's seated on his bum, but then on his shoulders and his back, he's got a big basin. And those basins were probably for lighting fire to represent the sun. And that's the archaeological evidence that seems to align with that later name of the Pyramid of the Sun. Is that one of the key artifacts that seems to support that theory?

Yeah. I mean, I think this guy was on top of the pyramid, and he did have fire on there. And if you imagine, you know, I always try and imagine what the rituals are like, and imagine all the little people that were down below, and up top, there'd be this fire burning up there. But that's not the only evidence that people have pulled together to suggest that it's the Pyramid of the Sun. Some other scholars down in front of the pyramid, when we're talking about its appearance, it probably did have one staircase. But that staircase went down to a small porch. Now, the porch is kind of big, but the pyramid's so big that the porch feels small compared to the pyramid. And so there was a small porch on the front.

We tend to call those adosadas, but it's a porch up there. And that porch had sculpture on it. And from the sculpture that we can see there, it had jaguars or felines on there. And we believe that those represent the jaguar lord of the underworld that's much better known of the Underworld. That's much better known for the Maya area. Tends to represent the sun and the nighttime sun and what happens with the sun when it's under, you know, when it goes under the world and then it reemerges the next morning. It also had some really interesting sculpture that seems to represent fire drills. So I don't know, you know, here in the States, sometimes when people are Boy Scouts and such, you have to make a new fire or a

virgin fire. And you take a stick and you wrap a rope around it and you twist it and you pull it really fast with some grass or something down there and you start a new fire when you didn't have a fire. And these sculptures show a twisted rope that would be used for starting that new fire and some folded paper and flames. So we see all the things for a new fire there. And so we believe that the Pyramid of the Sun was a place where they would start a new fire on certain ritual, very important dates. That's amazing evidence to survive. So you have potentially visual evidence of what one of these rituals looks like that would have occurred at the top of that massive structure at Tehutukon some 2,000 years ago. That is mad to say.

Yeah, but you know, it might have even been more complex because what we have too is they also found a brazier or a big basin that would have fire in it. And it also had the fire drill, a twisted rope and such like that. And if you look at the Pyramid of the Sun, it's so big that you might've been able to see the ruler or somebody or the elites up top. But it's so big that you wouldn't be able to see very much. And one wonders if this platform that has all that imagery about the new fire on it, if they actually drilled the new fire on that platform, maybe put it in this basin that we found. on that platform, maybe put it in this basin that we've found. And then maybe you had this dramatic situation where you took that fire all the way up to the top of the temple, and then put it on top of that old man that's hunched over and put it in the basin.

And then everybody could see it from all over the valley, right? You know, on this, up at the top of that. So, you know, these rituals are complex and we can start to try and reconstruct it that way. And of course, it's interesting in the parallel with other cultures, you can see building something very high and then making an offering almost to the gods because by being up high, that's the closest you can be to the celestial realm above. And you see that does seem to hint at its purpose. But I have also got to ask two questions. But the first question I'm going to ask is about sacrifice. Now, Annabeth, human sacrifice sometimes as well, usually associated with Mesoamerican pyramids. Is there any evidence for any type of sacrifice

happening at the Pyramid of the Sun? Baudrillard's made a cute little drawing that shows the pyramid, you know, as reconstructed, and he put little people, small children around on each of the four corners around on that, and on different levels. The problem is, is there's, other than that, and him saying it's there, there's not much evidence. And whether it was there or what the context of these burials, they're really, really problematic in that one. We haven't found, you know, they excavated the cave and very little stuff was found inside there. And so this may not have been the place where sacrifice was happening. It may have been more in the Pyramid of the Moon where we do see sacrifice happening. And it may

have been the Temple of the Feathered Serpent where we see sacrifice. happening. And it may have been the temple of the feathered serpent where we see sacrifice. I think this one was a temple that was dedicated not only to this new fire ritual, but I think also maybe the beginning of how you install a new king because the new fire ritual is associated with crowning kings, making kings and saying that you are the rightful king. Right. So actually that kind of hints in that we always sometimes get obsessed with wanting buildings to have one purpose and one purpose only. But actually almost always to build something monumental, there's more than one purpose for a structure. And so it sounds like with the Pyramid of the Sun, is it most likely that this would have been used for various types of ceremonies, as you've hinted at, both religious and secular, but of course,

you know, the religious and the secular worlds back then, they would have been entwined with each other. Right. So when we talk about, say, this new fire ceremony, we know that in Mesoamerica, there's a calendar system where there's a 260-day calendar and a 365 calendar, where there's a 260-day calendar and a 365 calendar. And these two are intermeshed. And it takes 52 years for those calendars to start over. And we know for the Aztec and other people that when that calendar started over was when they did a new fire ceremony.

In the Aztec, we know that they put all the fires out in the whole empire, and they started this new fire up on a hill, and then they brought that fire all over to all the communities in the empire. Whether that happened to Teotihuacan, we don't know, but it does tell us that they probably are doing this new fire ceremony every 52 years. However, as political people want to do, they like to connect their rule to religious things, right? And we see a lot of evidence that political rulers would think of themselves as a new fire or a new sun. for the presidency. It was about to be the year 2000. And they had all this stuff where they said, oh, we're going to be, you know, the president of the new millennium, right? And I think they did

the same thing in Mesoamerica, where they said, we, I'm the, you know, I'm the king of the new sun, the new era, the new solar era with that. And we do see a lot of evidence that when a person would come to power, they would drill a new fire, they would install themselves. And that was part of the symbolism of that, of showing that you were going to be the new king of that era. Very, very cool stuff. Now, Annabeth, I haven't got too much time, but a few more questions I'd love to ask. And one more is focused on the Pyramid of the Sun itself. I've got to ask about colour. Now, I imagine this must be also quite a difficult question with the surviving archaeology.

But do we have any idea whether this great monument that was important to the lives of these Teotihuacanos, do we think that it would have been full of bright colours? the lives of these Teotihuacanos, do we think that it would have been full of bright colors? Probably this one would have been more, the pyramid itself might have been more solid color. A lot of pyramids were painted white or red. Red was one of the most favorite colors. It's the color of blood. It's the color of life. And in this case, it would be the color of the sun. So it'd be my guess. But of course, having that material removed makes it really difficult to say. The porch in front with all that sculpture, that would have been painted in lime and also painted with different colors in that also. And going away from the Pyramid of the Sun, you mentioned earlier, of course, the Pyramid of the Moon and of the feathered serpent. So it begs the question, how do you think the Pyramid of the Sun correlates,

aligns with the Pyramid of the Moon and of the feathered serpent? Do we know much about their relationship? Yeah. The Pyramid of the Moon, to me, is dedicated to the idea of there's a deity called Talaq. That's a god that's associated with water and warfare. He's also the embodiment of where water comes from. It comes from caves that are inside of pyramids. And so there's a lot of evidence from the burials that were put in the Pyramid of the Moon that this represents the source of water, but also the source of warfare.

And these things are related because you go to war, you sacrifice people, and then you have the rains come. And there's a cycle in Mesoamerica for that. The Pyramid of the Sun, I think, was a place where kings were installed. It's a place where you celebrated the calendar and the system of the calendar in that. The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, a lot of people think, and I think it's a high possibility, that this was a later pyramid that was a ruler that really wanted to set himself up

as maybe more like a Maya king. There's possibility that there is actually a burial in that when it's just a little bit harder to identify. There's two locations that may be the burial of a ruler. And it has all this elaborate warfare imagery and such. He also killed a bunch of people to go with him into the supernatural world. And it may have been a system where someone got a little bit out of the system. And instead of being quite so cooperative, really was much more of a single control kind of ruler. And it didn't seem to last very long at Teotihuacan. We're talking about longevity as we really wrap up now, Annabeth. The question of

what happens to the Pyramid of the Sun? Because given its monumental size, I'm guessing that it never fades into obscurity. It's never lost. Do we know anything about the latest story, the legacy of the Pyramid of the Sun? Well, the Aztec continued to visit it for many, many years. We have accounts that even the king of the Aztec, the rulers of the Aztec would visit Teotihuacan periodically and make homage there. In fact, the Aztec tell us that the sun and the moon were created at Teotihuacan. And I'm sure that they thought of the Pyramid of the Sun as the place where those things happened, that this is where the first fire, you know, fire being the sun, and this is where the first fire happened. And so, you know, often people will talk about the Teotihuacan as being the place where time began.

And I think they were very good at that propaganda. And it was a propaganda that continued all the way to the Aztec. The legend of Teotihuacan survived. Well, there you go. Teotihuacan, where time began. What a title that is. Annabeth, this has been absolutely fantastic. Is there anything else that you'd like to mention about the Pyramid of the Sun

that we haven't really covered yet that you feel we should talk about before we finish? I would say one other thing that's evidence for its solar association is that the Sun sets on the same place on the horizon, directly across from the Pyramid of the Sun, in the same place, because the Sun moves on the horizon, right? And there's this one place where it sets in the same place. And those dates are separated by 105 and 260 days. Remember, 260 is one of those major solar calendar things. And so this was a pyramid that was set up with the rhythms of the universe. It was set up to align with the sun in an important day with the sun. It was set up to align with the sun in an important day with the sun. It was set up to align with the mountain that was there.

And in Mesoamerica, they talk about when the gods created the world, they placed three stones of creation. At Teotihuacan, the three stones of creation are in a triangle and they're mountains. There's three prominent mountains around Teotihuacan. And what sits right in the middle of those mountains is the Pyramid of the Sun. And in the middle of the three stones, the gods started the hearth. They started the first sun in the middle of it. In fact, you can look up in the sky and you can still see the Crab Nebula, which is the remains

of the first fire that the gods created up in the stars. And so I do think the Pyramid of the Sun is central. When you talk about it being central to the world, it's in the middle of three mountains. It sits there and they drilled that fire just like the gods did at the beginning of time. Do you think it potentially could have represented the artificial fourth mountain? Some people have said, you know, that these are the three stones, these three mountains. And I don't think that's it. I think the mountains themselves are the three stones. But the Pyramid of the Sun is built as a monument to the beginning of time,

as a monument to where the gods created the sun. Now, lots of cities in Mesoamerica thought that. I just think Teotihuacan was better at arguing it. Well, you know much better than me. And Annabeth, this has been an absolutely fascinating chat all about the Pyramid of the Sun, one of these great wonders of the ancient world. Annabeth, it is always such a pleasure. And it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today. Absolutely. Really fun, as always. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Annabeth Hedrick talking all things the Pyramid of the Sun at Tehutahuaqan.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode all about this still pretty mysterious Mesoamerican pyramid. all about this still pretty mysterious Mesoamerican pyramid and in time I'm sure we'll return to Tehutahua Khan and complete the set by also doing an in-depth episode on the Pyramid of the Moon. Now if you have enjoyed this episode with Annabeth then I would strongly recommend you also listen to our episode on the wider story of Tehutahua Khan in the Ancients Archive. You can just search Tehutahua Khan, you will Ancients archive. You can just search Tehutahuaqan, you will find it, listen on Spotify, and in that Annabeth gives the wider story of this great ancient Mesoamerican city. So I would strongly recommend you listen to that episode too. Last thing from me, wherever you are listening to the Ancients podcast, make sure that you are subscribed, that you are following

the podcast so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week. That's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.