Figure 1 © Dave Truman 2019

The view facing towards the North showing the Pyramid of the Moon from the Avenue of the Dead. Behind is the outline of Cerro Gordo (the Fat Hill). This great city of ritual was positioned precisely so as to emulate geometries expressed in the heavens and across the Earth’s surface. It could not have been built without the possession of an observational science that stretched back over millennia and which was grounded in very different premises from modern science. Its intellectual foundations may have been but half-remembered even when Teotihuacán was a living city.

…It is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion, orthodox in every age but the present, that the cosmic canon inherent in the solar system as in every other department of nature, was revealed to men, not invented by them.i

– City of Revelation, John Michell


City of pyramids

These remains, located about thirty miles (50 km) beyond Mexico City’s northern fringes, are unlike those of any other pre-hispanic metropolis in Mexico or Central America. Yes, there are ample pyramids here, just as there are in so many former Mayan and Aztec settlements, but in this place there is something very different, something very special.

In its heyday, in the early centuries of the Christian era, it is thought to have been the largest city in the Americas, stretching out over eight and a half square miles (22 sq km) and perhaps home to over 150,000 people. Today, the crisp angles of its two largest pyramids can still be discerned when you gaze upon its ruins from a distance.

They must have presented an even more imposing sight when as a living metropolis, however – their sharp red outlines stood proud against pastel blue skies and the dappled lime greens of the Mexico Valley. This was a place of geometric order, its pyramids set like exquisitely cut and mountainous rubies amidst the diffuse tones of a watercolour landscape.

Detail of a mural from Teotihuacán’s Palace of Atetelco dating from between 450 and 550 CE. The mural’s background red colour is probably very similar that of Teotihuacán’s principal pyramids when the City was occupied. Wolfgang Sauber [CC BY-SA 3.0].

When Cortes’ small band of Spaniards sojourned near to here, whilst on the run from a massed army of perhaps five to six hundred-thousand warriors, he climbed – what was by the year 1520 CE – a soil covered hill to view the fierce immensity of the Aztec enemy he faced. Yet this summit was not just a hill, but the overgrown vestiges of a great pyramid; a fact well known to his adversaries. The ensuing battle defied all statistics and probabilities. A few Spaniards charged on horseback and managed to kill the Snake Woman, the Aztecs’ totemic battle leader, whereupon the brutal assemblage immediately dispersed from the field.ii For the Aztecs, this was a place of most powerful portents.

Today, the place is called Teotihuacán, but we really have no way of knowing what the people who once lived and died there called it, because they do not seem to have produced any written records. The Aztecs, who were in the ascendency when the Spaniards arrived in the Valley of Mexico, gave the place the name by which we know it now, but even this may be a later corruption of its original name in the Nahuatl language they spoke,1 iii

The local Aztecs told the Spanish that they did not know who had built the city, which had been abandoned for many centuries by the time they came to settle in the Valley. Yet the Aztecs regarded Teotihuacán as a place of veneration and pilgrimage, not least because it was where they believed the contemporary world age – that of the fifth sun – was created.iv

A cosmopolitan city

Modern archaeologists are painstakingly recovering a certain kind of knowledge of Teotihuacán’s past in the bones, stones, pottery and middens left behind by time. Some, such as Linda Manzanilla, consider the city not to have been the product of one particular tribal culture or ethnic group, but rather a cosmopolitan metropolis comprising peoples from several different parts of central America and what is now Mexico.v That Teotihuacán appears not to have had any kind of political structure governed by a single a king or tribal leader, such as was the case in Mayan or Aztec cities, would support this view.

At the same time, the city was unusual in that it evidently resulted from a single and coherent urban plan consisting of four segments,vi perhaps providing a terrestrial reflection of the Mesoamerican celestial vault,2 vii which extended over the four cardinal directions. Indeed, ever since Leopoldo Batres discovered a ‘temple perfectly constructed and planned’ directly beneath the outermost layers of the Pyramid of the Sun in the early years of the twentieth century,viii it has become increasingly clear that the Teotihuacán complex was planned as a geometric unity, at least in its latter manifestations.

Why should this have been so? The conventional explanations of pre-industrial urban development, based as they are on the local availability of exclusively material resources necessary to sustain such a large population, cannot answer this question.

In 2018, archaeologists unearthed evidence of a Mayan presence in the city dating back to the fourth century CE. What was more, the designs on the frescoes they discovered nearby suggested that they had been painted by artists originating near to Tikal, in modern-day Guatemala, over 800 miles (1,300 km) distant. These particular Mayans were an elite group who occupied a plaza to the west of the site’s main causeway between Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. Whilst it is highly likely that they were involved in political and commercial relations with the native Teotihuacanos, it does not seem to have been the main reason for the Mayan presence in the city.

Overwhelmingly, the Mayan artefacts unearthed so far indicate that they had resided in Teotihuacán in order to engage in ritual activities there.ix Given that only 20% of this vast city has been excavated,x it seems likely that the metropolis was a centre of ritual practice for other Mesoamerican tribes, including the Nahua, Zapotec, Otomi and Mixtec peoples, who are all thought to have resided there during its existence.xi

Detail from the structure known as 5D-43 from the Mayan city of Tikal in Guatemala, which is considered to be in a style typical of Teotihuacán. Along with the presence of Tikal Mayan artefacts in Teotihuacán, this indicates that cultural connections between the two cities were mutual. Marie Carianna [CC BY-SA 2.0].

Teotihuacán presents us with an anomaly. On the one hand, archaeologists are finding more and more evidence of ethnic diversity there that would be redolent of many a modern city. On the other, its pyramids and residential areas display a consistency of urban planning, suggesting a high degree of social and political cohesion. How may we account for this?

Even though Teotihuacán had been abandoned a thousand years before the Aztecs had arrived in the Valley of Mexico, and that they had declared that they did not know who had built the city, its abandoned precincts were not entirely alien to them. The Aztecs were a people who built pyramids themselves and, interestingly, they even recognised that the city’s third largest pyramid was dedicated to a deity whom they called Quezalcoatl – the feathered serpent. There was, quite evidently, a strong continuity between Aztec culture and that possessed by this older civilisation.

Equally, there were indications of a significant intellectual rupture between Teotihuacán and the Aztecs’ much later epoch. It may have been that all Mesoamerican cultures drew on a common, and far more ancient, cultural heritage that included accurate measurements of both the Heavens and Earth as expressions of a cosmic unity. This embraced what we like to think of separately as science and religion, but which was more than the sum of both. By the time the Aztecs came to dominate the Valley of Mexico, this knowledge had been exacerbated to the point of being little more than mass savagery in ritual garb.

Astronomical alignments and heavenly proportions

The Mesoamerican world view had involved a meticulous study of the heavens over many centuries, which determined the timing and nature of the rituals and ceremonies performed at Teotihuacán. Take, for instance, the orientation of the Pyramid of the Sun, which is set at an angle of 15.5° east of true north. During the first century CE the pyramid’s sides aligned with local horizon positions of the sunrises on February 11th and October 29th, as well as with those of the sunsets on August the 13th and April 30th. The two sunrise dates, as well as those for the two sunsets, are separated by periods of 260 days, thus creating a 260 day astronomical and calendrical cycle – a feature of many Mesoamerican cultures. These four important dates were most probably marked by the performing of rituals there that would aim to ensure abundant yields of maize and other crops.

What is noteworthy is that the sides of an earlier version of Sun Pyramid’s base, now buried beneath its exterior, each measures 260 Teotihuacán Units of 32.68 inches (0.83 of a metre).xii Note the correspondence between this particular unit of linear measurement, the changing positions of the sun on the horizon and the annual cycle of time.

There is another association implied here that is also important, if not fundamental; it is the one that exists between the Pyramid of the Sun and fertility, or rather abundance. We will consider further ancient measurements, as well as the Sun Pyramid’s dimensions, geometry and functions, a little later.

Satellite photograph of the Pyramid of the Sun showing how two of its sides align to the positions on the horizon of sun rises and sunsets during four key dates of the year according to the 260 day ritual calendar. These alignments produce a 15.5° offset from true north, which was replicated throughout the entire metropolis within a margin of error. These alignments could have been surveyed only from the geometric centre of the pyramid’s base at ground level, suggesting it may have been done prior to the pyramid’s construction. © Google Earth 2019

There is no shortage of celestial alignments at Teotihuacán, and its causeways, streets, quadrangles and pyramids are replete with cosmic correspondences too numerous to mention in this short article. The US archaeologist James Dow had a penchant for studying the heavens, even as he was excavating artefacts in Teotihuacán’s precincts. Dow noticed that one of the city’s streets aligned at its eastern end with Sirius and to the West with the Pleiades; observations that were later corroborated by the astronomer Gerald S Hawkins. The orientation of this street, which Dow calculated to be at 16° East of North; (so close to the 15.5° mentioned previously as to be within a margin of error).4 Significantly, the entire Teotihuacán complex accords with this orientation, including its central axial causeway, known as the Avenue of the Dead, which is skewed to the East of true North at an angle of 15.5°. After analysing Dow’s data Hawkins concluded that Teotihuacán possessed a ‘cosmic orientation’ that had been ‘chosen and forced into the landscape’.xiii

When Hawkins examined Teotihuacán’s stellar alignments, he also noticed that the Avenue of the Dead at its northern end pointed towards the brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Major.xiv 5 This alignment takes on a profound significance when it is seen in the context of Mesoamerican cosmology, where Ursa Major was symbolised as a cosmic bird. Tellingly, a cosmic bird appears at the top of the relief carving on the lid of the sarcophagus of Lord Pakal, found in the Mayan city of Palenque. The cosmic bird (Ursa Major) is perched on top of a ceiba tree, which Lord Pakal touches while looking towards a cross depicted on the ceiba’s trunk.

According to Mayanist Linda Schele, the ceiba – the Mesoamerican World Tree – is a motif for the Milky Way. Wrapped around the trunk and within its boughs there is a stylised carving of a double-headed serpent, which is a cosmological metaphor for the ecliptic,xv the sun’s apparent path across the heavens. The sarcophagus lid is thus a celestial map that depicts Lord Pakal viewing the heavens when the Milky Way crosses the path of the ecliptic. The Mexican researcher Victor Torres believes that the same celestial configuration is present in the layout of Teotihuacán itself. If he is right, then the Avenue of the Dead would correspond to the Milky Way; a hypothesis that is supported by the alignment of Ursa Major’s brightest star with the Avenue’s axis at its northernmost end.xvi 6


Far from being the representation of a space capsule reminiscent of late 20th century technology, the sarcophagus lid of Lord Pakal shows the eponymous Mayan monarch as he studies the heavens when the Milky Way crosses the path of the ecliptic. The Mesoamerican symbols depicted here are: 1). The Cosmic Bird/Ursa Major. 2). The Milky Way/World Tree that unites the three vertical worlds of the Mesoamerican cosmos. 3). The double-headed serpent/path of the ecliptic. 4). The four cardinal directions/divisions of the sky and Earth. 5). Lord Pakal, who gazes directly at the cross that is the Milky Way’s conjunction with the ecliptic. (Colours are for illustrative purposes only). © User:Madman 2001 [CC BY-SA 2.0].

The engineer Hugh Harleston Jr., who spent many years surveying Teotihuacán’s structures, became convinced that the complex was a scale model of the solar system.xvii Essentially, he discovered that the Avenue of the Dead contained certain markers that were spaced out so as to be proportionate to the distances of the planets from the sun. When he combined these tentative findings with those of his friend Alfred Schlemmer on the standing waves generated by earthquakes, both men came to the realisation that the astronomical distances between the solar system’s heavenly bodies were also related their spin and rotation.

According to Schlemmer this property, known as torsion, was responsible for generating standing waves in certain sections of Avenue of the Dead when, as he believed, it once had been filled with water. He argued that this provided a means of detecting the existence of earthquakes anywhere on Earth, because the dimensions of the water-filled segments of the Avenue were such that they caused water to resonate in particular patterns of standing waves. Schlemmer concluded that the phenomenon occurred when there were subtle changes in the speed of our planet’s rotation and orbit.xviii


Much of the northern part of the Avenue of the Dead consists of a series of sunken quadrangles that may have been filled with water on certain dates of ritual importance. This notion is supported by the presence of apertures in the sides of some the quadrangles (see enlargement, right) that would have allowed water to flow along the Avenue of the Dead. Some consider that when filled with water, the Avenue would have contained the terrestrial reflection of the Milky Way in the heavens immediately above Teotihuacán. © Dave Truman 2019.

Knowledge of the Earth’s dimensions

This bold finding followed on from Harleston’s discovery that a standard unit of measurement of 41.711 inches (1.059 metres) had been used by the ancient Teotihuacanos. Of itself, this was hardly surprising, given that the metropolis displayed such a high degree of uniformity in its design, but Harleston claimed that this linear unit of measurement governed not just the proportions of Teotihuacán, but the space-time geometry of the very cosmos itself.xix Needless to say, such startling claims have been roundly criticised by more conventional researchers, but it is important to realise that their disapproval really stems from the radical implications of Harleston’s claims, rather than from the accuracy of his measurements.

In short, Harleston’s findings imply the existence of a highly sophisticated science dating from at least the time of Teotihuacán’s apogee, and from perhaps long before then. Moreover, it is quite curious that this 41.711 inch unit is exactly twice the length of the Egyptian royal cubit,xx as well as being a six-millionth part of the Earth’s polar radius.xxi

Academic investigations at Teotihuacán have come to one conclusion that seems to contradict those of Harleston. Arizona State University archaeologist Professor Saburo Sugiyama’s equally meticulous surveying discovered a standard linear unit there that measured just 32.68 inches (0.83 of a metre).xxii On the face of it, his findings could be used to dismiss Harleston’s apparently exorbitant claims, given that Sugiyama’s unit of length is shorter than that found by Harleston, but we need to delve deeper here.

Just like Harleson’s unit of 41.711 inches, the 32.68 inch unit is very close to other ancient linear units, including the Spanish vara, the Japanese shaku and the Harappan gaz.xxiii Perhaps most tellingly of all, it is virtually identical to the megalithic yard,xxiv which is thought to have been ‘derived directly from the polar circumference of the Earth using a system of geometry that was based on the number of revolutions of the planet in a year.’xxv 7

If so, then the value for this unit incorporated a calibration of time manifested through the spinning of our planet on its axis, just like Harleston claimed his 41.711 inch unit did. The essential difference between the two units is not that they are different lengths, but rather that Harleston’s unit is a fraction of our planet’s polar radius, whereas Sugiyama’s 32.68 inch unit is a fraction of its polar circumference. Both units may be examples of a single and highly sophisticated ancient system of metrics that drew on an exact knowledge of the Earth’s polar dimensions.

This realisation raises a plethora of questions about what some ancient peoples really knew about our planet, its angular momentum, dimensions and dynamics. It hints that, by choosing to use two different units of linear measurement simultaneously, their purpose was not just to mark out linear space, but rather to denote the presence of certain proportions in the fabric of the cosmos at large.

Additionally, it implies that Teotihuacán’s positioning on the Earth’s surface in relation to the geographic poles, known to us today as its latitude, may have been far from arbitrary. Was there then also a connection between Teotihuacán’s latitude and its function as a centre where rituals were performed?

To our modern way of thinking, this may seem a strange question to ask, but I need to remind readers that the ancient Teotihuacanos possessed a world view that encompassed science as much as it did the spirit world. The realm in which people lived and died – sometimes violently in ritual sacrifices – was lodged between the heavens and the underworld. All three domains partook of a cosmology that reflected the same archetypal template; thus the road to the underworld, known to the Mayans as xibalba be, was also Milky Way’s dark rift,xxvi while the Milky Way itself was the World Tree that united the Heavens, the Earth and the Underworld.xxvii

Part of the Milky Way’s Dark Rift looking towards the Galactic Centre from the Earth. The part of the Dark Rift that appears as a broad dark ‘cloud’ to the right of the picture lies between the constellations Aquila (the Eagle) and Serpens (the Serpent). Just like the Orion Nebula, this region of the sky adjacent to the Milky Way is thought to be where new stars are formed. A. Fujii/NASA (Public domain).

The celestial, middle and underworld all manifested in the physical realm at Teotihuacán at the very axis of the Mesoamerican cosmos. The city’s Pyramid of the Sun was built directly over a cave that may have been dug in order to conduct rituals and ceremonies,xxviii possibly long before the metropolis was ever built. In fact, there are extensive tunnels beneath the abandoned city, suggesting that Teotihuacán’s underworld played an important part in the rituals performed there,8 with some even showing signs of having been sculpted so as to depict subterranean landscapes.xxix

Perhaps significantly Teotihuacán’s locus, at a latitude of 19.4° North of the equator, possesses many volcanoes and has been subject to numerous lava eruptions. Some consider that this band of latitude conforms to a pattern of energetic phenomena that is present on the surfaces of many planets in our solar system, as well as on the sun. At these latitudes, the exteriors of the solar system’s heavenly bodies (specifically at 19.47° both north and south of the equator) display evidence of excess heat and other forms of energetic activity.xxx The gaseous vortex we see as Jupiter’s red spot is perhaps the best known example of this phenomenon, but there are many others.xxxi

A glimpse into higher dimensions?

If Teotihuacán’s 19.4° N position on the planet is indeed not purely random, then we are freer to consider questions that lie beyond the ambit of more conventional studies of the site. Most obviously, these centre on the nature of this ‘energy’ and its possible connections with the ritual practices that were undertaken there. Clearly, although it manifests in our physical three-dimensional reality primarily as volcanic heat, this cannot explain why Teotihuacán was constructed as a centre where shamans, priests and others came to perform their ceremonies. Such rituals aimed to establish contact with, knowledge of, or even immersion in, a realm beyond that of humans’ usual three-dimensional perceptions.

If we follow this line of thinking, then perhaps Teotihuacán’s 19.4° latitude was a location that facilitated contact with such a realm. This may not be as ridiculous as it first seems, if we consider consciousness to be at least as real as the material world that dances before our senses every moment of our lives. Some schools of physics, nowadays largely ignored by the scientific establishment in the West, attest that there are higher spatial dimensions beyond the three that we are normally accustomed to perceiving. Might these hyper-dimensions also have been the spirit realm of Teotihuacán’s shamans?

It just so happens that the metropolis’ 19.4° N latitude conforms to a geometry that is thought by some to denote the gateway to those very higher dimensions. In the hyper-dimensional reality described by this physics, that gateway renders our 3D world palpable, in terms of physical structures and energy, but equally it informs9 the physical realm, principally through the creation of three-dimensional geometry necessary for material structures to exist.xxxii For some who aver this unconventional version of physics, pyramids are thought to amplify the information and other effects that pass through the higher-dimensional gateway into our mundane three-dimensional reality.xxxiii

If we imagine the Earth as a perfect sphere, then Teotihuacán’s 19.4° N latitude is very close to the upper edge of a tetrahedron within that sphere when the position of the tetrahedron’s inverted apex rests on the Earth’s geographic South Pole. (Curiously, the very same tetrahedral geometry provides the mathematical model for all of the angles, dimensions and proportions that comprise the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán). A tetrahedron is the simplest geometric form that can exist in three dimensions, because it has the fewest number of points and edges that can form a solid object. I cannot help but wonder if this fact is related to some now long lost function of the Sun Pyramid that, for the shamans and priests of Teotihuacán, stood at a gateway to our mundane realm of three dimensions. © Tony Cross 2019 [https://twitter.com/beyondmyths].

Intriguingly, there is yet more about the geometry and proportions of the Pyramid of the Sun that suggests it has a profound connection with the Earth’s dimensions, and especially its surface area. The height of any pyramid is directly proportionate to the combined length of its perimeter’s sides, but in order to calculate its dimensions, it is first necessary to use multiples of the irrational number π (3.142857 etc).

For the Pyramid of the Sun, the formula for doing so uses 4π, which of itself indicates that the Pyramid’s architects were more mathematically sophisticated than they generally have been given credit for.10 xxxiv Their use of 4π is, however, even more intriguing because the formula for calculating the surface area of a sphere is 4π r2. When Harleston calculated the total surface area of the Sun Pyramid’s four sides, he found that it was directly proportionate to that of the Earth.xxxv In other words, the Pyramid of the Sun provides a mathematical model of the Earth’s entire surface area.

More questions than answers

How did Teotihuacán’s architects, who seemingly did not know the use of metals or the wheel, come to possess such knowledge about our planet’s surface area? (We also need to remember here the linear units of measurement mentioned earlier that are proportionate the Earth’s polar dimensions, which betray a similar level of sophisticated knowledge). Why should anyone want, let alone need, this information?

A clue to answering this question may lie with Teotihuacán’s pyramids, and in particular with their function as centres for sacrificial rites, including human sacrifice. Perhaps understandably, conventional archaeology has tended to gloss over this connection, but it is undoubtedly true that many pre-hispanic stepped pyramids in the Americas functioned as centres where these rites were conducted.

Neither were such practices confined to Mexico and Central America, since Tiwanaku’s Akapana in Bolivia – also once a stepped pyramid – had been used as a human sacrificial centre.xxxvi In the indigenous mythologies associated with these locations, stepped pyramids were invariably where a new creation unfolded after a catastrophe had destroyed a previous world. For Teotihuacán, as stated previously, it was the point of origin of the fifth sun. The practice of human sacrifice therefore may have been an attempt to placate the forces of the cosmos, or gods, in order to avert another catastrophe that could bring to an end the existing order of the world.

Yet, this explanation on its own does not require the need for precise observations of time and space. Neither can it tell us how those who built Teotihuacán came to possess such an exact knowledge of our planet’s dimensions. Might it be that this knowledge was a relic from a much older epoch, which came to be built into the ritual spaces of this metropolis after the underlying science had been mostly forgotten?

Seen in this way, the city’s great pyramids may have inherited certain key features from earlier technological devices11 that had amplified and resonated with hyper-dimensional information.xxxvii Perhaps, even today, they still remain capable of doing so to some extent, precisely because Teotihuacán’s architects had preserved the ancient traditions of measurement derived from their painstaking celestial observations.

Teotihuacán’s end was just as mysterious as its creation. Although some interpret the starting of fires there in its ultimate years as evidence of an insurrection, others think them deliberate, perhaps as a part of some long-forgotten rite of termination. Just like the much older ritual metropolis of Göbekli Tepe, Teotihuacán came to be buried deliberately under a layer of soil, for reasons that our modern minds find difficult to fathom.


References

1 Edith Vergara and Enrique Castillo of INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia de México), have found that the name Teotihuacán: ‘City of the gods’, or ‘City where men become gods’ in the Nahuatl language spoken by the Aztecs, is probably a wrong transliteration of ‘Teo uacan’. This means ‘City of the Sun’.

2 John Major Jenkins notes that a four-fold division also features in Mesoamerican traditions that divided up the heavens. Significantly, the meeting point of these celestial divisions was where the ecliptic crosses the Milky Way in Gemini, providing a celestial marker for the mythological point of creation. (Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, p117). Teotihuacán may also have corresponded to the crossing point of the ecliptic and the Milky Way (see the paragraph below which discusses Lord Pakal’s sarcophagus). This would, of course, be consistent with the tradition that Teotihuacán was the birthplace of the fifth sun.

3 August 13th 3114 BCE was also the date on which the epoch of fifth sun was believed to have been initiated. The date was therefore of supreme ritual importance in ancient Teotihuacán.

4 It may be equally that the slight differences in orientation have arisen from the decay of many of Teotihuacán’s adobe structures over the years, or from the inaccurate reconstruction work after earlier excavations. Even if these were conscious changes of orientation, however, many researchers consider they ‘were dictated by deliberate and astronomically functional’ methods. It is also worth considering the work of Carl P Munck in this respect. He calculated the orientation of Teotihuacán to be 15.49193338°, which is virtually identical to Šprajc’s empirically derived 15.5°. Munck considers 15.49193338° to be a mathematical constant that encodes the grid positions of several ancient sites, including Stonehenge, in addition to Teotihuacán. For Munck, the value of 15.49193338 is the product of at least seven different equations that involve: the use of π and its multiples, the Radian and the volume of a sphere, among other sophisticated mathematical concepts.

5 In the English speaking world, we know Ursa Major as either the Plough, or the Big Dipper.

6 The name Avenue of the Dead (Calzada de los Muertos) is thought by many to be a misnomer based on a phonetic error that happened when Europeans first transcribed the Nahuatl name that the Aztecs called it. They wrote it down as Micóatl, but it was probably Mixcoatl, the name for a Mesoamerican god who ruled over the Milky Way, and was father of Quetzalcoatl. It also needs to be borne in mind that the Milky Way features as the conduit for the afterlife journey in several Mesoamerican traditional cosmologies, just as it did for Native North Americans, the Incas and ancient Egyptians.

7 If the megalithic yard was derived in this manner, then it may also imply an understanding of the concept of torsion amongst those who devised it, as well as the other equivalent ancient units of measurement.

8 Researcher Marco Vigato has conducted extensive investigations of the caves and tunnels beneath Teotihuacán’s three principal pyramids. He considers them to date from an era of megalithic construction that is much older than the extant ruins on the surface, possibly even as old as 10,000 BCE.

9 I use inform here to mean ‘give shape to’, as well as in the sense of providing information.

10 Conventional history attributes the discovery of π to the Greek Archimedes. The architects of Teotihuacán are generally assumed to have known nothing about it.

11 An ancient, and no longer understood, technology may also explain the presence of mica in the Pyramid of the Sun and on the Avenue of the Dead, as well as that of liquid mercury in the tunnels beneath the Pyramid of Quezalcoatl.

i Michell, John, City of Revelation: On the Proportion and Symbolic Numbers of the Cosmic Temple, Abacus, London, 1973, p62.

ii Tompkins, Peter, Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, Harper & Row, London, 1978, pp71-72.

iv Thought Co., ‘The Legend of the Fifth Sun’ (23 May 2019) & Hancock, Graham, Faiia, Santha, Heaven’s Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilisation, Michael Joseph, London, 1998, pp18-19.

vi ibid.

vii Major Jenkins, John, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, Bear & Company, Rochester Vermont, 1998, p117.

viii Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, p194.

ix Instituto Nacional de Anthropología e Historia, ‘Élite maya residió en Teotihuacan, revelan hallazgos en la Plaza de las Columnas’ (22 September 2018).

xi Vidler, Mark, Young, Catherine, Sacred Geometry of the Earth: The Ancient Matrix of Monuments and Mountains, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, 2016, p114.

xii Šprajc, Ivan, Astronomical Alignments at Teotihuacan, Mexico, Latin American Antiquity, Vol. 11, No4, Society for American Archaeology, 2000, pp406, 409.

xiii Hawkins, Gerald S, Beyond Stonehenge, Arrow Books, London, 1977, pp187-188.

xiv Beyond Stonehenge, p188.

xv Major Jenkins, John, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, Bear & Company, Rochester Vermont, 1998, p117. See also: Soul of Distortion, ‘The Most Important Symbols of the Maya Creation Myth’.

xvii Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, p264.

xviii Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, pp271-272.

xix Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, pp277-278.

xx Mayan Treasure, ‘Mathematics of Ancient Architecture’ (July 2008).

xxi Michell, John, The New View Over Atlantis, Thames and Hudson, London, 1983, p131.

xxiii Knight, C, Butler, A. Civilization One: The World is Not as You Thought it Was, Watkins Publishing, London, 2004, pp147-149, 165.

xxiv Jim Allen, ‘Teotihuacan cubits and measuring units’ (Atlantis Bolivia, 16 June 2009).

xxv Civilization One, p48.

xxvi Mayan Cosmogenesis 2012, p117.

xxvii Philips, Charles, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Aztec & Maya, Lorenz Books, London, 2008, pp142-143.

xxviii The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Aztec & Maya, p54, & Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, p339.

xxx Hoagland, Richard C, Bara, Mike, Dark Mission: the Secret History of NASA, Feral House, Los Angeles, 2007, pp 24-26.

xxxi Dark Mission, pp21, 49-50, 65.

xxxii Dark Mission, pp25-26.

xxxiii Richard C. Hogland, ‘Torsion Physics’ (2013).

xxxiv Hancock, Graham, Fingerprints of the Gods: A Quest for the Beginning and the End, Heinemann, London, 1995, pp177-180.

xxxv Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, pp279-280.

xxxvi Blom, Deborah E, Janusek, John W, Buikstra, Jane E, A Re-evaluation of Human Remains from Tiwanaku, Archaeology and Paleoecology in the Tiwanaku Heartland: Rural and Urban Archaeology, Volume II, Alan L. Kolata (ed), Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 2003 pp435-448.

xxxvii Farrell, Joseph P, de Hart, Scott D, The Grid of the Gods: The Aftermath of the Cosmic War and the Physics of the Pyramid Peoples, Adventures Unlimited Press, Kempton, Illinois, 2011, pp217-225.

11 thoughts on “Teotihuacan: Model of a Very Different Cosmos”

  1. John DAVID Tenayuca says:

    The Toltec Empire and Civilization is forgotten in History as the pyramid builders. Do your research and tell the TRUTH please. It is a tragic shame how we are forgotten in the equation of being the builders of Teotihuacan!

    1. Dave Truman says:

      I’m disappointed that you’ve not used this as an opportunity to provide any information, nor discuss your ideas with me. I’m aware of the tradition that the Toltecs were primordial to Mesoamerican civilisation, but that this founding culture should not be confused with the one that flourished in Tula rather later than Teotihuacan. Your silence speaks volumes about where you’re coming from on this. It’s a place devoid of honest research, as much as it’s somewhere that lacks a willingness to debate issues openly.

  2. John DAVID Tenayuca says:

    I am serious about poor research in the truth behind this history! http://about.me/johntenayuca

    1. Dave Truman says:

      Thank you for your comments John David. I am sorry that you think my article is the product of poor research, apparently because I made no mention of the Toltecs. My work was based on a visit to Teotihuacan I made earlier this year, to which I added information gleaned from a number of sources that I have cited in the footnotes. I note that the link that you have posted contains nothing by way information that you accuse me of having overlooked. Perhaps you should consider disseminating the information that you say is so important to understanding Teotihuacan? After all, if you have decided not to use your website to do this, I am sure that you could post something here.

  3. Edmond says:

    Dave, excellent summary of Mexicology or Mayanology, demonstrating the sophistication possible in cultural crafts such as natural philosophy, myth and architecture.
    Many authors assume that applications involving natural quanta, develop slowly, and from astronomy. However nature and culture strongly tend to express the same archetypal features in all their media. Thus analogies of the three planes of space and time (galactic, ecliptic, celestial) do not arise from, and are not sustained by astronomy. Culture is more rigorous, universal and complex than the simplistic ‘as above so below’ plods of correspondence theories.
    See the subconscious structure in some Teotihuacan murals, and in its site plan here; https://mindprintart.wordpress.com/2019/07/18/subconscious-blueprint-in-teotihuacan-art-and-site-plan/
    I could not find Teotihuacan on your website, could you plug a link. Or have you not posted other articles on those pyramids yet?

    1. Dave Truman says:

      Thanks for your comments Edmund. I shall study the article you’ve posted the link to. (It merits more consideration than I can muster right now). I think what you’re driving at in your comments sounds right to me. I agree that it’s an oversimplification to say, ‘As above, so below’ and to leave things at that when trying to understand Teotihuacan. I came to a similar realisation when, while researching the article, I began to understand that the road to the underworld was the Milky Way’s Dark Rift. No, I haven’t posted anything about Teotihuacan on the website. In fact, I need to post more material there, but I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my book.

  4. Liz says:

    I think our future is written in our past…sounds weird but the more you guys discover, the more important the past becomes to me. Thank you for all you do. !

    1. Dave Truman says:

      Well, it’s a cliche to say so, but it’s nonetheless true that time is cyclical.

    1. Dave Truman says:

      Thanks Michael.

  5. Rajiv Mistry says:

    Hi David,

    Wonderful reading your article indeed! Thank you for the effort!

    The mention of water and standing wave based patterns used for global earthquake detection at Teotihuacan got me intrigued. Are there any specific research documents you can point me to so I can send study these? I’m a mechanical engineer and have an interest in modeling vibrations with simulation software. I’m also an amateur astronomer so the factual details around measurements at the site and correlation to global and cosmic distances is also of high interest to me. I tend to gloss over conjectures and opinions injected while respecting the subjective judgment of the author as these are difficult to prove without factual basis. So the two lengths mixed with temporal variables you mention are also of interest to me. But not the associated “multi-dimensional” conjecture associated with these. Multi-dimensional calculation is not myth or magic in engineering, it is an extension of the math driving the known four dimensions into additional ones and projecting results from additional dimensions into the known ones.

    I wanted share my own collection of articles and presentation about Caral as a gesture of appreciation for your work here:
    Peru: Caral Supé & the Norte Chico civilization http://flip.it/FIkVNo

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