Northeast of modern-day Mexico City stand the remnants of one of the world's largest preindustrial cities, Teotihuacan. Monumental in scale, Teotihuacan is organized along a three-mile-long thoroughfare, the Avenue of the Dead, that leads up to the massive Pyramid of the Moon. Lining the avenue are numerous plazas and temples, which indicate that the city once housed a large population that engaged in complex rituals and ceremonies. Although scholars have studied Teotihuacan for over a century, the precise nature of its religious and political life has remained unclear, in part because no one has yet deciphered the glyphs that may explain much about the city's organization and belief systems. In this groundbreaking book, Annabeth Headrick analyzes Teotihuacan's art and architecture, in the light of archaeological data and Mesoamerican ethnography, to propose a new model for the city's social and political organization. Challenging the view that Teotihuacan was a peaceful city in which disparate groups united in an ideology of solidarity, Headrick instead identifies three social groups that competed for political power—rulers, kin-based groups led by influential lineage heads, and military orders that each had their own animal insignia. Her findings provide the most complete evidence to date that Teotihuacan had powerful rulers who allied with the military to maintain their authority in the face of challenges by the lineage heads. Headrick's analysis also underscores the importance of warfare in Teotihuacan society and clarifies significant aspects of its ritual life, including shamanism and an annual tree-raising ceremony that commemorated the Mesoamerican creation story.

Fifteen hundred years ago, Teotihuacan was one of the world's greatest cities. Some 200,000 people lived in this Mexican metropolis, with its massive public buildings, grid plan of streets and imposing murals and sculpture. Its trading empire dominated much of ancient Mexico. Then, in the 8th century, came a mysterious collapse. Even knowledge of the original name was lost: Teotihuacan, City of the Gods, was a title bestowed by the Aztecs six hundred years later.

Founded in the first century BCE near a set of natural springs in an otherwise dry northeastern corner of the Valley of Mexico, the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan was on a symbolic level a city of elements. With a multiethnic population of perhaps one hundred thousand, at its peak in 400 CE, it was the cultural, political, economic, and religious center of ancient Mesoamerica. A devastating fire in the city center led to a rapid decline after the middle of the sixth century, but Teotihuacan was never completely abandoned or forgotten; the Aztecs revered the city and its monuments, giving many of them the names we still use today. Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire examines new discoveries from the three main pyramids at the site—the Sun Pyramid, the Moon Pyramid, and, at the center of the Ciudadela complex, the Feathered Serpent Pyramid—which have fundamentally changed our understanding of the city’s history. With illustrations of the major objects from Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología and from the museums and storage facilities of the Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de Teotihuacan, along with selected works from US and European collections, the catalogue examines these cultural artifacts to understand the roles that offerings of objects and programs of monumental sculpture and murals throughout the city played in the lives of Teotihuacan’s citizens. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Exhibition dates: de Young, San Francisco, September 30, 2017–February 11, 2018 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), March–June 2018

First comprehensive English-language book on the largest city in the Americas before the 1400s. Teotihuacan is a UNESCO world heritage site, located in highland central Mexico, about twenty-five miles from Mexico City, visited by millions of tourists every year. The book begins with Cuicuilco, a predecessor that arose around 400 BCE, then traces Teotihuacan from its founding in approximately 150 BCE to its collapse around 600 CE. It describes the city's immense pyramids and other elite structures. It also discusses the dwellings and daily lives of commoners, including men, women, and children, and the craft activities of artisans. George L. Cowgill discusses politics, economics, technology, art, religion, and possible reasons for Teotihuacan's rise and fall. Long before the Aztecs and 800 miles from Classic Maya centers, Teotihuacan was part of a broad Mesoamerican tradition but had a distinctive personality that invites comparison with other states and empires of the ancient world.

In the ancient, ruined city of Teotihuacan, mutilated bodies bear witness to the work of a serial killer. After his brother's tragic death, Detective Captain Juan Morales decides to take a well-deserved vacation. But as he stands at the Avenue of the Dead, staring at a corpse with it's heart ripped out, he realizes this is not the peaceful retreat he had in mind. When Morales meets the beautiful archaeologist, Sophia Kanakarides, he is instantly drawn to her. As more gruesome murders surface, Sophia lends her expertise to help solve the crime... and places herself in mortal danger.

What if ancient sites such as Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza, the Acropolis, and Temple Mount are not only thousands of years old but much older? Until recently, a lack of hard evidence has led mainstream archaeologists to dismiss theories of past civilizations as pseudoscientific attempts to resurrect ancient myths and legends. However, new archaeological discoveries are beginning to challenge conventional explanations. Inspired by Charles Hapgood's hypothesis that the ice ages were the result of shifts in the geographic location of Earth's poles, independent researcher and author Mark Carlotto has discovered that numerous sites throughout the world are aligned to what appear to have been four previous positions of the North Pole over the past 100,000 years. By virtue of their alignment to ancient poles Carlotto proposes a new hypothesis: that the original sites were first established by a previous advanced technological civilization that existed throughout the world tens of thousands of years ago and were later co-opted by our ancestors who rebuilt and expanded over and around the older structures while preserving the layout and orientation of the site to the original pole.Before Atlantis considers the possibility that this previous technological civilization could have developed from an earlier migration of modern humans out of Africa, which later might have co-existed with our primitive hunter-gatherer ancestors, and that past encounters with this older civilization were the source of ancient myths and legends of powerful gods, lost continents, and even Atlantis. Mark Carlotto is an aerospace engineer with over thirty years of experience in satellite imaging, remote sensing, signal and image processing, pattern recognition, and app development. Carlotto received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1981 and has published over one hundred technical articles and written six books. In Before Atlantis, Carlotto draws from his unique background and experience to propose new answers to basic questions concerning human origins, ancient technology, and archaeological enigmas.