Introduction

Mesoamerica includes most of today’s Mexico. It includes all of Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador. It includes northern Honduras. It also includes a stretch along the Pacific as far south as Costa Rica.

Mesoamerica contained complex societies prior to the arrival of Europeans. It peaked between 200 and 650 CE. This Classic Period includes Teotihuacan. It also includes several Maya city-states. However, between 650 and 900 CE, they declined. Historians and archaeologists agree that these urban centers collapsed. However, they still debate the causes. Was it a sudden collapse? Or was it a gradual downsizing?

Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan—say it with me: TAY-OH-TI-WAH-CAHN—is located about 30 miles north of modern Mexico City. People first settled this area around 400 BCE. The city probably began as a humble center of pilgrimage. Merchants of Mesoamerica likely gathered there for religious festivities for the blessing of their trade.

By 550 CE, over 150,000 people lived there. It had become a major city. Teotihuacan was the most populous urban center in the Western Hemisphere. It was among the largest in the world. You could walk the city streets listening to the local language, Nahuatl, along with dozens of other tongues from the wider reaches of Mesoamerica, such as Zapotec, Otomí and Maya.

Teotihuacan elites were rich and powerful. We do not know if the rulers shared the same ethnicity. Most spoke an earlier form of Nahuatl. This is the language spoken much later in the Aztec Empire.

We know very little about Teotihuacan’s history. We do not even know what its inhabitants called it. The Aztecs found this city’s astonishing ruins 600 years after its debatable “collapse.” They called it teotihuacán. It means “the place where the gods were created.” The name is a reference to the city’s large buildings, advanced culture, and mysterious past.

Teotihuacan has three major pyramids. One is the Temple of the Sun. It is the third-largest pyramid in the world (after Cholula in Mexico and Khufu in Egypt).

The Mayas

Unlike Teotihuacan, Classic Mayas didn’t have one main city. Rather, they had several strong cities. They were connected to each other by their shared culture.

The cities of the Maya Classic Period were centered in today’s Guatemala. They stretched across the borders of Mexico, Belize and Honduras.

Only the elites lived in the city. Cities were centers for religious and government affairs. Only priests, military leaders, and artists lived in urban areas.

The peasants lived outside of the city. Peasants’ lives were much less fancy. The work of peasants fed the urban population. They also provided labor and military service to the ruling class.

The collapse of classic Mesoamerica

The word “collapse” is tricky. It’s hard to know when, why and if a complex society really collapsed. Certainly, all societies appear to have a beginning, middle and end. Yet just like stories, there are sequels and spin-offs. Scholars like to look for that single event that destroyed a particular society. It is more likely, however, that several factors ended the story of a particular society or empire.

Teotihuacan had no writing system. So, we can only read the city’s ruins.

Some scholars say the collapse of Teotihuacan was the result of war. Certainly, the remains of Teotihuacan show signs of violence. Yet, violence itself is not a sign of collapse. In the third century, Teotihuacan people destroyed their own pyramid. But the city did not decline.

Around 650 CE it looks like the city experienced new violence. Soon after, Teotihuacan began to lose its dominance. So, some call this the collapse. We do not know for certain that violence caused the collapse. Other factors might have played a part. Some examples could include overpopulation, droughts, or political divisions.

The end of the Maya society is another fascinating story. Unlike Teotihuacan, the Mayas had a written system. So we know the names of their kings. We know the exact year they came to power and when they fought wars. These stories are carved in their monuments. Yet they reveal nothing about their collapse around 900 CE. Books might have offered better clues, and the Maya left many behind. But in 1562, a Spanish friar named Diego de Landa burned every Maya book he could find.

Wait, did we say collapse? Because actually, new Maya city-states continued being built until the Spaniards arrived. Hundreds of Maya communities still exist today. So in some ways, the story is still being written.

Whatever happened in Mesoamerica between 650 and 900 CE, we know that people began to abandon the major cities. It was the end of an era. The society didn’t vanish, though. The ruling class lost its capacity to rule. Yet the people continued to exist. Their culture and their customs continued, too.