Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan grows up north of present-day Mexico City, and in its best centuries holds more than a hundred thousand inhabitants — one of the largest cities of its world. It is laid out on a single grid around the broad Avenue of the Dead, along which stand the pyramids of the Sun and Moon and the temple of the Feathered Serpent. Its people live in apartment compounds, work obsidian and trade across all Mesoamerica; the city has quarters of settlers from other regions. In the sixth or seventh century the centre burns and empties. The Aztecs, coming long after, will call the ruins the place where the gods were born.