While my persona is Maya, I have also had a long-standing interest in the city of Teotihuacan. It's not simply the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, or the Avenue of the Dead that interests me, but the mystery surrounding the Teotihuacanos themselves that pulls my attention to this particular culture of the Americas. What happened to the people that created one of the greatest cities of the Americas?

Teotihuacan was Known to the Aztecs as "the place of the gods" and its ability to inspire awe is not a modern invention - even those cultures that visited the city shortly after its demise were impressed. At its height in approximately 500 ce, it claimed the honor of being the largest city in the Americas, home to roughly 200,000 souls and its influence and power was long reaching. This was helped by the fact that the city was built straddling an established trade route that ran from the Gulf to the Valley of Mexico.

Unfortunately not much is known about the inhabitants and builders of this awe-inspiring city. They left no written records and archaeologists are left to piece together the life and times of the Teotihuacanos using the monuments, murals, figurines, pottery and other material items. What information has been gathered points to a society divided into distinct groups such as nobles and merchants - and all seemed to be governed by a caste of ruler priests. Craftsmen and artisans thrived and it is likely they formed their own enclaves within the city, along with resident foreigners.

The city itself was vast and covered an area greater than that of Imperial Rome. The main road is called the Avenue of the Dead and connected the huge marketplace with the Citadel as well as both the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. Lining the road would have been small pyramid-shaped platforms originally topped with temples and stretching further out one would have found palaces and one-story residential apartment complexes. The buildings would have been decorated with murals depicting fish, birds, serpents, coyotes and jaguars in addition to various gods - all executed in vibrant shades of red, greens, yellows and blues. Those murals that have survived are breath-taking to behold and more than a little interesting when compared to slightly later cultures such as the Toltecs and the Aztecs.

And speaking of the Aztecs - while the Teotihuacan was no longer a huge religious and commercial center with a thriving population, the Aztecs still included it in their legends of creation. They believed the world had already seen four suns, or creations, and at the ending of the fourth sun it was at Teotihuacan that the gods gathered to decide which of them would throw themselves into the flames of a ritual fire and become the fifth sun - hence the name "place of the gods". Moctezuma II, the last Aztec ruler, made pilgrimages on foot to Teotihuacan giving evidence of the importance of the city to the Aztecs.