MEXICO CITY, MEXICO—According to an Associated Press report, archaeologist Veronica Ortega of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History thinks the city known as Teotihuacan, or “city of the gods,” may have originally been called Teohuacan, or “city of the sun,” by the Aztecs. Some 700 years after the city was abandoned, Aztec rulers traveled there in an effort to legitimize their rule. Ortega says the word “Teohuacan” had been written beneath an Aztec pictogram referring to the city with the sun, temple, and ruler signs in the Xolotol Codex. Later Aztec documents drawn up after the arrival of the Spanish use the word “Teotihuacan” for the same city, however. Ortega suggests Spanish colonists changed the city’s name because the sun was used as a symbol for rulers, and they wanted to change the seat of power in the region to Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. “They wanted people to see Teotihuacan as a place of worship, but not as a place where rulers were anointed, because they wanted to keep the political center in Tenochtitlan,” Ortega explained. For more, go to “Aztec Warrior Wolf.”
