“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” as Mark Twain is often reputed to have said.

Archaeologists Uncover Secret ‘Passage to the Underworld’ at Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan
Stillness in the Storm
Nov 18, 2019

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...There is evidence that an internal uprising caused by an ecological disaster resulted in a population decline and an overthrowing of the ruling class.

Because many structures showed evidence of being burned, researchers understandably concluded that a rival civilization attacked the city. The problem is that only structures belonging to the ruling class were burned, which indicates an internal revolt. But why did the population rise up against the ruling class?

It turns out that a famine during major droughts caused by a climate change in 535-536 AD could have been the cause. The city relied overwhelmingly on agriculture for food, growing everything from tomatoes, maize, beans, pumpkins and more, but once the droughts kicked in, the food supply started to dwindle and there was not enough food for the large population. A reason for this sudden climate change may have been the 535 AD eruption of the Ilopango volcano in El Salvador. After all, the volcano resulted in several Mayan cities being wiped out or abandoned, why not Teotihuacan?

Just because we don’t know exactly who built the city or why it was abandoned, it doesn’t mean we haven’t learned a lot about Teotihuacan and the people who lived here.

Archaeologists have been excavating the site for decades, and have found murals, stone masks, statues, figurines and evidence of human and animal sacrifices.

A lot of this evidence of human and animal sacrifice has been found at the Pyramid of the Moon, built between 100 and 450 AD at the end of the Avenue of the Dead. Connected to the street is a staircase that leads to a stage where these rituals were performed. The site of the pyramid also serves as a burial ground for the sacrificed and there is an altar dedicated to the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan.

In a recent excavation, archaeologists recently made an exciting find when they discovered a tunnel beneath the pyramid they believe served as a metaphorical passage to the underworld, which makes sense since humans were sacrificed at the site.

“In the explorations carried out at the end of the 1980s, through tunnels excavated in the body of the pyramid, archaeologists Ruben Cabrera and Saburo Sugiyama found skeletons of individuals with cranial deformation, as in the Mayan area, and various green stone objects, so it is not difficult to think that something similar could be found in the subsoil,” Dr. Veronica Ortega of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History told IFLScience.

“The tunnel is located to the south of the Plaza de la Luna,” Ortega continued. “But it is likely that there is another entrance to the east side, so it is essential to have complete radiography to know where its entrance is.”