Teotihuacán
The largest city in the Americas, and we do not know who built it
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The city is remarkable for lacking portraits of rulers: no royal statues, no named tombs. Instead people lived in large apartment compounds, and the art is collective. Some scholars see a republican or collegial government. Around 550 the centre was systematically burned — probably from within. The Aztecs found the ruins and believed the gods themselves had made the world there.
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Teotihuacán held over a hundred thousand people and an avenue more than four kilometres long. The city was planned from scratch. We do not know what its people called themselves or what language they spoke — the name was given by the Aztecs a thousand years later.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org