At the height of its power, the ancient city of Teotihuacan was a marvel of grandeur and magnificence in ancient Mesoamerica, having ascended to become its largest city, as well as being one of its most culturally significant.
Yet by 900 A.D., Teotihuacan had fallen under the might of the invading Toltecs, and knowledge of who had assembled one of the leading cultural centers of the early Americas was erased. Little was left for modern archaeologists beyond the culture’s imposing architecture, which include the famous Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon.
However, these impressive structural remnants were not all that the inhabitants of Teotihuacan left behind. Amid the site’s ruins, ancient murals, and the artifacts that have weathered Mesoamerican climates for millennia, archaeologists have also found symbols left by the city’s ancient inhabitants, which to this day have remained undeciphered.
That is, until now. In a new research effort, led by Magnus Pharao Hansen and Christopher Helmke of the University of Copenhagen, the meaning behind Teotihuacan’s enigmatic symbols is finally coming to light, revealing new evidence of an early Uto-Aztecan writing system.
The discovery, detailed in a study that appeared in the journal Current Anthropology, could potentially reshape theories about the ancient city and its inhabitants, and opens a window to more deeply understanding the lives and beliefs of those who once thrived at Teotihuacan before its fall.
This ancient Uto-Aztecan writing system, the researchers say, appears to have evolved over time into the Cora, Huichol, and ultimately the Nahuatl languages, the latter being associated with the Aztecs.
While these languages are known, as is much about the architecture of sites like Teotihuacan, Hansen and Helmke liken their presence to discovering ruins from an ancient civilization like Rome or Greece, but with no knowledge of their builders. Equally perplexing would be the discovery of ancient writings from such a society, but with no ability to read ancient Latin or Greek to aid in deciphering clues about their way of life.
“There are many different cultures in Mexico,” Hansen said in a recent statement on their work. “Some of them can be linked to specific archaeological cultures. But others are more uncertain.”
“Teotihuacan is one of those places,” he says. “We don’t know what language they spoke or what later cultures they were linked to.”
Fortunately, the inhabitants of Teotihuacan left behind their symbols, which adorn the walls of buildings, are interwoven into their ancient murals, and even appear on common household items like pottery. However, it has long remained a question as to whether these symbols were an actual formal written language or something else entirely.
For Hansen and Helmke, the answer seems clear now: not only do the symbols indeed represent a language, but its linguistic components appear to suggest that Nahuatl-speaking groups had been present in the region far earlier than once thought, and may even represent the descendants of Teotihuacan’s mysterious original inhabitants.
Testing their idea led the researchers to compare Teotihuacan’s symbols to an older variant of the Nahuatl language they reconstructed, comparing the alternative to “trying to decipher the runes on the famous Danish runestones, such as the Jelling Stone, using modern Danish.”
“That would be anachronistic. You have to try to read the text using a language that is closer in time,” Helmke said, arguing that a language contemporary with the period in question is a requirement.
That isn’t to say that deciphering a lost ancient script like the unique symbology present at Teotihuacan was any simpler. While some symbols appear to represent the direct equivalent of what they depict (such as the symbol for “coyote”), others function like a rebus, where a combination of pictures are used to convey a more complex word.
Hence, the team’s efforts, which are still ongoing, require both the reconstruction of the ancient Uto-Aztecan language, as well as a working knowledge of ancient forms of Nahuatl to aid in the proper interpretation of the texts.
“In Teotihuacan, you can still find pottery with text on it, and we know that more murals will turn up,” Hansen says, noting the limitations he and Helmke have encountered given the limited number of texts scholars have access to.
“It would be great if we could find the same signs used in the same way in many more contexts, Hansen said. “That would further support our hypothesis, but for now we have to work with the texts we have.”
Still, their progress has already shown promise, and Hansen says that they have already successfully created a method that they say allows them to decipher several of the texts, which they hope will allow future research to build on their process. In fact, researchers unrelated to the team’s current work are already taking interest, they say.
“No one before us has used a language that fits the time period to decipher this written language,” Hansen recently said. “Nor has anyone been able to prove that certain logograms had a phonetic value that could be used in contexts other than the logogram’s main meaning.”
“In this way, we have created a method that can serve as a baseline for others to build on in order to expand their understanding of the texts,” Hansen said.
“If we are right, it is not only remarkable that we have deciphered a writing system,” Helmke said. “It could have implications for our entire understanding of Mesoamerican cultures and, of course, point to a solution to the mystery surrounding the inhabitants of Teotihuacan.”
The team’s paper, “The Language of Teotihuacan Writing,” appeared in Current Anthropology.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.