sym🖤

As it happens, The (arguably) largest city in both Mesoamerica and all of the Americas during the Roman period (Teotihuacan), had Maya, Zapotec, Michoacano and Gulf Coast ethnic neighborhoods inside of it! For some context, Teotihuacan was a city in the Valley of Mexico (later the core of the Aztec Empire, today Mexico City) and at it's height at 400-500AD, had ~100,000 denizens , a ~20 square kilometer urban grid, with the city as a whole covering 37sqkm (so notably wider then Rome, but not as populated... not sure if the 100k is for the 20 or 37sqkm area) Some sectors of that grid, such as the Merchant's Barrio, the Oaxaca barrio, etc have art, burial practices, and some architectural features associated with those cultures (you can read about the Gulf coast one/the Merchants Barrio here: storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/6bce84… There's actually a theory that Teotihuacan had a longstanding Maya embassy, due to (IIRC) some finds at the Plaza of the Columns compound, as well as some structures potentially identified as Teotihuacano embassies at major Maya cities like Tikal, though there seems to have been a diplomatic breakdown with the compound being desecrated, and some Maya sites have inscriptions of conquests some researchers identify as Teotihuacano invading and installing rulers on Tikal and other Maya sites, and we subsequently see Maya elites adopting a lot of Teotihuacano iconography. Some articles about this, keep in mind though not all researchers ascribe to this, but a fair amount do: science.org/content/articl… science.org/content/articl… science.org/content/articl… Anyways, we do also know Teotihuacan had diplomatic contact with the most powerful Zapotec city, Monte Alban, and Teotihuacano art and architectural influence is seen there in Oaxaca, as I mentioned in the Southern and Central Maya lowlands even down in Guatemala, and other parts of Mesoamerica. Some people even call it the Rome of Mesoamerica as a result, but as the first Science.org article says, it probably only "directly" ruled a kingdom within Central Mexico and just had wider influence, and even then it's "direct" subjects may not have been under direct administration (tho I'm not familiar with the specifics for Teotihuacan here so maybe they were):, Mesoamerican kingdoms/empires tended to be hegemonies, even the Aztec Empire was actually pretty hands off: x.com/Majora__Z/stat… In general Teotihuacan has some weird urban design traits: it lacked ball courts, as mentioned had the ethnic barrios, a huge urban grid, which was aligned to a central road, etc, all of which were unusual in Mesoamerica (typically things were organized around plazas to have ritual alignment/for communal activities in the urban core, then larger radial suburban sprawls). But my favorite unique trait is that basically the entire population was living in fancy palace compounds with dozens of rooms, painted frescoes, some plumbing etc, comparable to Roman villas or Chinese palaces. In most Mesoamerican cities these served as elite or royal residences but in Teotihuacan they acted as apartments even for many commoner families. Due to that, the multi-ethnic setup, a lack of signs of singular autocratic rulership, it might have been a republic or a democracy (we see this during the Aztec period at Tlaxcala, for example: youtube.com/watch?v=FVgNul…) In any case, while there were some earlier disruptions of shifts inside the city, around 550-650 AD, there was a major event, probably a civil uprising, and the city had a major decline. By some models, it still had tens of thousands of people for a few centuries after, and even during the Aztec period some towns were in and around the ruins, but it ceased to be the giant political player it was after the uprising. The Aztec actually did excavations at the site's ruins, brought back artifacts to Tenochtitlan (the Aztec even revived some Teotihuacano art and architectural styles and some urban design elements: see mesoweb.com/pari/publicati… , mesoweb.com/es/articulos/s… , and researchgate.net/publication/28…, plus x.com/ohs688/status/…), and kings preformed pilgrimages there, and worked the site into their creation myths --------------- For people curious for more, I helped out with a nearly 40m video on Teotihuacan here: youtube.com/watch?v=aV6ZZZ… Also, see "ALT" labels for more info about each image and the specifics of what's being shown, how accurate each reconstruction is, etc. Pic 1 by @Trasancos , 2 has credits within image, 3 is by @DavidRo14403650 , and 4 is by @RafaelmenaI (and is the most up to date reconstruction of any part of Teotihuacan)