Huēyi Teōcalli (Templo Mayor)

Mexico, Mexico.

3. May, 2017.

One must have an active imagination and previous knowledge of the Aztec (Mexica) capital Tenochtitlán, to recreate in the mind how it’s major temple complexe, Huēyi Teōcalli, called Templo Mayor today, must have looked like in pre-Hispanic times. With a large part still buried under modern buildings, the ruins are what is left after the victorious Spaniards and it’s numerous native allies, the Totonacs, Huastecs, Otomis and Nahua city states, had raised the city to the ground in 1521. To complete the destruction, the Spanish built the modern city of Mexico on top of it, trying to obliterate it’s existence entirely.

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The ruins visible today show consecutive construction on the temple site, a witness to the royal tradition of newly crowned kings in this part of the world to improve on the works of their predecessors by building on top of important buildings in a more grander scale.

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Walking around the ruins with my son, I used my imagination as best I could to at least recreate in my mind how this must have looked in 1520. It was hard and I wished that some smart wunderkind could invent the holographic technology made famous in Star Trek. Hopefully this can be realized in not so distant future. Then we could digitally recreate Hueyi Teocalli and walk around there to wonder at this lost world. Dream on!

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