Mesoamerica 2019 - Day Fourteen, Mexico City Major Sights 3 of 3, Templo Mayor

The last thing we did on our second day in Mexico City was visit the Templo Mayor. This is a excavation of the largest, central pyramid that was in middle of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. After its conquest  by the Spanish led by Cortes, the city was completely razed and the new capital of Mexico City was built on its ruins. This represents the only major excavation of Aztec civilization in the city. I will leave my thoughts and comments related to that part of history and the subsequent influence on Mexico to my verbal post. We'll focus here on the visit to the site.

The Templo Mayor was actually seven pyramids built on top of each other. With each new ruler, a layer would be added to show the continuing expansion and power of the Mexica (what the Aztec referred to themselves).

This shows how the Templo Mayor stood up to other major ancient sites

Archeologists were excited when they found this tree preserved which has major cosmological significance in the Mexica world view where the binary approach to world balance was foundational

A picture of what the capital of Tenochtitlan and the Templo Mayor looked like

The serpent is a major symbol in Mexica philosophy

And is found throughout the site

Oddly enough there is still veneration of the serpent found today in odd places like Lafayette, CA where instead of its Mexica name, Quetzalcoatl, it is venerated as Kyle!

Here are some examples of how the pyramids were layered one on another

Examples of Mexica decorative style on the pyramid

In addition to the ruins being excavated, there is also a museum that had a wealth of pre-conquest art that was excavated from the site

I apologize that I have not taken the detailed notes of what these all were

But the important thing to recognize is that they are stylistically different

Because they represent a wide range of other native American cultures that either preceded the Mexica or were coexistent with them

This acknowledges that the Mexica built their legitimacy on prior great powers such as the Toltecs

In fact the primary God, Tlaloc, was actually a Toltec (society in Mesoamerica whose power preceded Mexica by many centuries)