It's easy to accidentally hit a like or dislike button. Extremely important to avoid this when looking at old photos of someone on lovebook

Many cities around the area were not abandoned. The area from about 40 miles north of mexico City to the chaipas border with guatamala has many a city that date to any where from 200 to 400 ad.

Yes it is, also it is 4 kilometers, not for 4 miles

So when the aztecs got there, those pyramids were in ruins. No one knows who built them.

No they didn't

@Anthony Diaz I'm not so sure about that

On their migration south from Aztlan yes! They eventually stumbled into Teotihuacán! The Mexica actually names the city! Teotihuacán is in Nahualt!

If Aztecs had this scientific technology/where-with-all some 2,100 years ago do you think the would have been overtaken by mere 300+ musket wielding Spaniards in the early 1500's, which would be some 1,600 years later. Aztecs had no wheels or pack animals - i.e. camels, domesticated cows and horses, or highly sophisticated machining tools!

Find our essay Machu Piccu here: smarthistory.org/machu-picchu/

You wrote that ancient urban planning of this kind existed only at the Harappa / Indus River Civilization, but they are more than twice as old as Teotihuacan). I am confused since by the time of Teotihuacan, about 2,000 years ago, there had been significant urban planning in many parts of the world. You mention Egypt for one. Is it possible that Teotihuacan had a utopian non-hierarchical society? Of course that is possible, and if that were true it would be a lovely thing! Unfortunately, there is no evidence that I have seen to support what would be an historical anomaly. Historians avoid bias by focusing on available evidence, not putting forward what we wish was true.

@@smarthistory-art-history If I could clear up some misunderstandings, I didn't mean that any kind of urban planning didn't exist at all outside of the Indus River Valley and Teotihuacan. Rather, urban planning of this scale, to a degree that would benefit vast swaths of the population, is hardly common in most urban polities throughout human history. But there's this tendency to assume that if there exists a city or urban settlement of any kind, that there must be a king or ruler or group of rulers a priori of any evidence whatsoever. Yet, all the evidence that confirms rulers to exist in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotomia (grand mausoleums, statuary, geneologies, royal cult systems, etc.) are not yet to be found in the Indus River Valley or Teotihuacan. That might be due to inability to translate script (or lack of any written records detailing the institutions), and I know the phrase "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," but is it any more unreasonable to suggest that the city might not have been administered through a centralized authority as people tend to presume?

@@smarthistory-art-history Then there's also the fact that very few places in history had people living in apartment complexes except for Rome and Teotihuacan. Whereas apartments in Rome tended to be cramped, crowded, and prone to catching on fire, apartments in Teotihuacan were spacious, had access to running water of some kind, and quite durable. More importantly, there weren't exlcusive to a ruling elite, as many studies indicate that a substantial amount of the population got to live in them. Such evidence, if we're open to it, might strongly suggest that the society consisted of ceertain principles different to surrounding and contemporary societies to lead them to construct in such a way. I'm no implying them to be utopian, any more than the Northeastern Woodland indigenous Americans were. Though, to suggest that I am would make it easier to disregard what I'm actually saying, though

The level of sophistication in the city impressed the Mexica and it certainly impresses me. It would be fascinating to find evidence that supports a nonhierarchical society at Teotihuacan. Maybe someday we will.

@@smarthistory-art-history Hopefully, but no guarantee. I hope I didn't come off too brash and antagonistic. It's just an all too familiar tendency I've confronted to assume a priori that a society organized at such a largr scale could only function with social hierarchies and centralized authorities, and any that don't ought to be "civilized." I do admire the fascination with which the women talk about the ancient city