Teuchitlan: the unearthing of a lost world<br>Today, more than 150,000 people a year visit the Guachimontones, a local word meaning "mounds where you find plenty of bottle gourds." A well paved road takes them up the hill from Teuchitlu00E1n to a parking area which became too small almost as soon as it was created. Two of the three largest pyramids have been beautifully restored, each with its circular walkway or "patio" and surrounding platforms, which were previously bases for public buildings.<br><br>Between the second and the third largest pyramids lies what was, in its day, the largest ball court in Mesoamerica, 111 meters long. The game they played was quite different from the Aztecs' and, in fact, a form of it, called ulama is still played today in Sinaloa. The ball was a heavy round stone covered in natural rubber which players could hit with their hips. According to archeologists, all the skeletons of males found at Teuchitlu00E1n have broken hips. This was not a game for the faint-hearted!<br><br>The ball games were often played from sunrise to sunset. Points were gained by getting the ball into a corner in one of the L-shaped legs at each end of the playing field and immobilizing it. Interestingly, points were lost for errors and a team could end up with a negative score if they didn't play impeccably, a concept that even today might be useful for improving certain modern sports. At the end of the day, the captain of the winning team would receive the great honor of losing his life as a sacrificial victim.<br><br>Ancient life in Guachimontones<br>Wandering about the Guachimontones, we naturally asked ourselves just what was going on in this place 1800 years ago when those same walkways were crowded with the native people of this area, who u2014 for want of a better name u2014 we'll call the Teuchitlu00E1n Nation. What sort of ceremonies took place here and how would it have felt to be a participant?<br><br>Some answers to these questions can be found in 25 maquetas or clay models found buried in various sites under the influence of the Teuchitlu00E1n Tradition. These extraordinary works of art are around 2,000 years old and reveal what the curious circular architecture was typically used for. Unlike codices, which show stylized figures only understood by experts, the little clay figures give us a three-dimensional look at people chatting with their neighbors, carrying on business or playing everyday games.<br><br>Unlike the Aztecs, whose ceremonies resulted in rivers of blood coursing down the sides of their pyramids, the people of Teuchitlu00E1n worshiped Ehu00E9catl, a gentle god, who didn't need human sacrifice to satisfy his ego. On ceremonial days, the ring-shaped "patio" was crowded with people chatting and jostling one another or perhaps linked arm in arm, performing the cadena, or chain dance while listening to groups of musicians. Around this walkway, on evenly spaced terraced platforms, the local VIPs gazed out the doorways of buildings that to western eyes might look typically Chinese. They had tall, pointy, gabled roofs which, along with their wattle-and-daub walls, were carefully plastered and beautifully painted in bright colors. The VIPs chatted with the people in the milling crowd, perhaps discussing the latest score of the ball game taking place in the court located alongside the largest pyramid. Directly to the north, a huge crowd of onlookers watched the events from a steep, terraced hillside, a vantage point from which music from the pyramids could easily be heard.<br><br>Everyone, of course, was anxiously waiting for the main event of the day to begin. A sturdy pole had been set in the exact center of each steep pyramid. No one today knows exactly what its function was. The clay models show a "flier" balanced on top of the pole, perhaps tied to it so he wouldn't fall off. He probably represented Ehu00E9catl, the bird man, and, as the clay models show us, a crowd of people pushing on the pole caused him to "fly." It is also possible that ropes were wound around the pole, as is still done today in Veracruz, and that fliers tied to the ropes and bedecked with feathers, swooped through the air in ever-widening circles, soaring up and down like the graceful birds, finally to land on the circular walkway around the pyramid. The width of this ring was always the same as a second, exterior ring where the buildings were placed, following a complicated geometrical formula; and the diameter of the pyramid was always 2.5 times the width of the walkway.<br><br>Unique architecture<br>These proportions form the basis for Teuchitlu00E1n's formal circular architecture which is unique not only in Mesoamerica, but in the entire world. Nearly two hundred complexes employing this architectural style have been found in western Mexico, making it easy for archeologists to trace the limits of Teuchitlu00E1n's influence.<br><br>Another characteristic of these people was the construction of shaft tombs. A very deep hole, just over a meter wide, would be dug, with burial chambers at the bottom. The long, narrow shaft might be up to 20 meters deep, a kind of insurance policy meant to protect the tombs from looting. Unfortunately, this strategy has not dissuaded modern tomb raiders, who have beaten the archeologists to the bottom of just about every shaft tomb in Jalisco. On one of the few occasions when an untouched tomb was found, over 60,000 artifacts were discovered.<br><br>Apart from its unusual architecture, the Teuchitlu00E1n tradition was distinguished by a particular way of decorating their ceramic pieces, a process now referred to as pseudo-cloisonnu00E9. After firing a pot, they would roughen its surface and apply chaute, a mixture of charcoal, oil of sage seed and a glue-like substance from the camote tuber. When this black coating was nearly dry, they carved out certain areas and filled them with bright colors made from inorganic materials such as azurite and red ochre, leaving the raised chaute as a black border. In the past, the colorful panels they created were thought to be merely decorative, but studies have shown that many of these ceramic pieces display glyphs similar to those found in Mexico's famous codices, meaning that the countless ceramics spirited out of western Mexico over the years probably contain a wealth of valuable information.<br><br>The Codex of Ehu00E9catl, for example, found near Teuchitlu00E1n by the Norwegian explorer Carl Lumholtz, is now in the American museum of Natural history in New York, along with forty other pieces taken from the same place. This panel depicts the god Ehu00E9catl (the Night Wind) dressed in feathers, his nose pointed like a bird's beak and with claws for feet. Sad to say, tomb robbers are not interested in the codex-like information on the outside of these pots, only in the monitos (figurines) frequently found among them. When they smash one of these vessels, says Weigand, "It's like walking into an historical archive, taking out the year 1776, and burning it because your fingers are cold."<br><br>The bright light of the Teuchitlu00E1n Tradition began to dim around the year 500 AD for reasons that may never be known, but archeologists tell us that a day came when every building around the circular pyramids was burned to the ground. For a while it was thought that this indicated an abrupt end to that enigmatic civilization, but recent excavations prove that Teuchitlu00E1n was inhabited continuously for 2,000 years, from the pre-classical period right through to the post-classical.<br><br>Faithful replicas of the clay models showing life around the Guachimontones at their moment of glory are on display at the Museum of La Casa de Cultura Teuchitlu00E1n, at number 10, Calle16 de Septiembre, one half block west of the plaza. There's nothing quite like them anywhere else in Mesoamerica. An excellent 30-minute documentary on Teuchitlu00E1n is also shown there daily. The hours are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday. Tel: (01 384) 733-0833 and 733-0129. Note that a new, state-of-the-art "interactive museum" is now under construction at the Guachimontones. The building - round like the circular pyramids - was designed by architect Francisco Pu00E9rez-Arellano and will cost 28 million pesos. The Teuchitlu00E1n archeologists will finally have room to display thousands of artifacts, skeletons and bones found at the site and visitors will plunge into a long, curving tunnel filled with multi-media gadgets for a "journey into Teuchitlu00E1n's past." The new museum (which comes with a new parking lot as well) is expected to open its doors in early 2010.<br>
