One of the largest cities of the ancient world — a meticulously planned metropolis in the highlands of central Mexico, dominated by colossal pyramids and a grand central avenue, home to well over a hundred thousand people at its height. Its monuments survive in extraordinary detail, yet we do not know what its builders called themselves, what language they spoke, or how they governed.
We do not know what the people who built this city called it, or themselves, or the gods to whom they raised some of the largest pyramid structures in the ancient Americas. We do not know what language they spoke or who ruled them. The name we use, Teotihuacan, was given centuries after the city fell by the Aztecs, who found its ruins already ancient and believed the gods had been created there. At its height it held well over a hundred thousand people, laid out on a rigid grid around an avenue more than two kilometers long. Then, around the sixth or seventh century, its sacred heart was burned, and the city's political identity passed out of the readable record so completely that we still do not know what its builders called themselves. It is at once a triumph of early city-building and one of archaeology's deepest silences.