More than two millennia ago, Teotihuacan was a thriving metropolis in central Mexico with up to 125,000 inhabitants. The city had gigantic pyramids and was a cultural center in Mesoamerica at the time.
But the city, which today consists of ruins and is a popular destination for both archaeologists and tourists, holds a great mystery. Who were its inhabitants?
Researchers Magnus Pharao Hansen and Christopher Helmke from the University of Copenhagen have presented a possible solution to the mystery in the renowned journal Current Anthropology.
By analyzing the signs on Teotihuacan's colorful murals and many other artefacts, they have concluded that the signs constitute an actual writing system, and they believe that this writing records an early form of the Uto-Aztecan language, which a thousand years later developed into the languages Cora, Huichol, and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.
The Rome of Mesoamerica
Teotihuacan was founded around 100 BC and was a major cultural center in central Mexico until its fall around 600 AD. Magnus Pharao Hansen and Christophe Helmke make a comparison to the city to Rome, which was the center of the Roman Empire. In the same way, Teotihuacan had great cultural significance in ancient Mesoamerica.
But imagine if we had found ruins from the Roman Empire but knew nothing about the people who lived there. This is largely the case with Teotihuacan.
“There are many different cultures in Mexico. Some of them can be linked to specific archaeological cultures. But others are more uncertain. Teotihuacan is one of those places. We don't know what language they spoke or what later cultures they were linked to,” says Magnus Pharao Hansen.
According to Christophe Helmke, a trained eye can easily distinguish Teotihuacan culture from other contemporary cultures. For example, the ruins in Teotihuacan show that parts of the city were inhabited by the Maya— a civilization that is much better known today than Teotihuacan.
The revival of a language
The ancient people of Teotihuacan left behind a series of signs, mainly as murals and decorated pottery. For years, researchers have debated whether these signs even constitute an actual written language.
Magnus Pharao Hansen and Christophe Helmke show that the writing on the walls of Teotihuacan is in fact record a language that is a linguistic ancestor of the Cora and Huichol languages and the Aztec language Nahuatl.
The Aztecs are another famous culture from Mexico. Until now, it was believed that the Aztecs migrated to central Mexico after the fall of Teotihuacan. However, Magnus Pharao Hansen and Christophe Helmke point to a linguistic connection between Teotihuacan and the Aztec, which could indicate that Nahuatl-speaking populations arrived to the area much earlier and that they are actually direct descendants of the inhabitants of Teotihuacan.
In order to identify the linguistic similarities between the language of Teotihuacan and other Mesoamerican languages, Magnus Pharao Hansen and Christophe Helme had to reconstruct a much earlier version of Nahuatl.
“Otherwise, it would be a bit like trying to decipher the runes on the famous Danish runestones, such as the Jelling Stone, using modern Danish. That would be anachronistic. You have to try to read the text using a language that is closer in time and contemporary,” says Christophe Helmke.
