CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15
5. Platforms and pyramids played an important social and cultural role in the Ancient cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt and pre-Columbian America. Choose ONE of these cultures and discuss how these roles were expressed in their architectural treatment, function and special context (i.e. within a city and/or a natural landscape).
The culture of pre-Columbian America has been shaped by several civilisations, including the Olmecs, the Maya, the Aztec, the Teotihuacán or the Toltec amongst others. Although all these civilisations were disperse, both on a spatial and a temporal scale, they have adopted similar cultural identities as translated in the architecture of the Mesoamerican area. This architecture includes platforms, pyramids and temples, and the forms that these architectures have adopted, especially pyramids, were mainly dictated by religion, astronomy and cosmology. In this essay, I shall focus on two preColumbian cities – Teotihuacán and Tenochtitlan – and discuss how the social and religious aspects of these cultures influenced and were expressed in the architecture and planning languages of these pre-Columbian American cities.
Religion in pre-Columbian America was based on astronomy and mythology. For example, one of the most fundamental beliefs of the people of Mesoamerica was that people and gods have emerged from caves1, and that entrances of caves are associated with hidden treasures and hidden sources of water (thus life). In Teotihuacán, this strong relationship with the holy landscape is further enhanced by its location surrounded by mountains (fig.1)
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CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15
– mountains are places where clouds delivered rain in the rainy season, and the city is thought to be ‘nestled at the very centre of fertility-bringing mountains’2. This shows that the pre-Columbian religion did not relate only to the land, but also to the air, the sky, and nature in general. The strongest relation they had with the sky was through astronomy. The latter dictated the calendar that these people used, and astronomic alignments were often associated with the will of gods. Religion was a pillar to the society of Teotihuacán – it dictated most aspects of life, and gods (nature by extension) were often depicted as beneficial. Religion, like in the Maya culture, was administered by very powerful priests and society became gradually hierarchical.3 As a result, aspects of religion like warfare and sacrifices became prevalent – war captives and citizens (through extorsion or for the sake of the community4 were often sacrificed as offerings to the gods. It was believed that without blood to keep gods refreshed, they would perish5. Moreover, human sacrifices were a way to establish a social hierarchy and provided an instrument of intimidation6. Astronomical observations were also a common practice as part of the religious cult. It is important to understand that all these elements of Teotihuacán, and more generally Mesoamerican culture, are interrelated – social life and politics were centred around religion, and the latter was a major driver of architectural form in this area.
Teotihuacán was the largest pre-Columbian American city. Its name means ‘The Place Where Men Become Gods7’ in Aztec, because the latter thought it
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CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15
impossible for men to build such grand structures when they discovered it. There are three main pyramids in Teotihuacán (fig.2) – The Pyramid of the Sun, the Pyramid of the Moon and the Temple of The Feathered Serpent. All these are religious structures; this means that their form and location have been heavily influenced by the religious functions they had to fulfil. For example, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon were built on the top of caves8. We have already discussed the religious significance of caves as a symbolical cradle of life. Moreover, the forms the pyramids have taken were probably aimed at mimicking the surrounding mountains (fig.3). Again there is a very strong symbolism here – the pyramids are metaphorically trying to assume the functions of mountains as bringers of water and life into the city. Moreover, Vincent Scully sees the horizontal lines making up the stepped levels of the pyramids as fractures where the mass of the pyramid squeezes and forces the water out of the mountain9 (fig.4). The sheer size of the pyramids can also be informed by the hierarchy of priests having emerged in the Teotihuacán society, with the need for these deified figures to be closer to the heavens than the masses, strengthening this relation with gods and the heavens. The pyramids were also used in a more functional, rather than symbolical way as a platform for astronomical observations. They were also used as platforms where human sacrifices took place. These two aspects of the Teotihuacán religion are clearly demonstrated at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, where many people were sacrificed as part of a war cult regulated by the planet Venus and its
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CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15 position in the sky during its 584-day cycle10. The Temple of the Feathered Serpent is also probably the first instance in the use of the talud-tablero profile in Mesoamerican architecture11(fig.5). The position and orientations of the buildings in Teotihuacán, and the layout of the city itself are also influenced by astronomy. The pyramids were built over caves, and while caves symbolise water and life, some also argue that the four lobes of the cave under the Pyramid of the Sun also represent the four parts of the Mesoamerican cosmos12. Ivan Sprajc classifies the alignment of the city into the 17° family and that this orientation is based on the path of the setting sun on specific dates relevant to the sun calendar13. It is thought that the rest of the city alignment was done in relation to the alignment of the Pyramid of the Sun, and that the North-South axis is not perfectly perpendicular to the East-West axis for some other astronomical reasons14 (fig.6).
Tenochtitlan was founded by the Aztecs in 132515, which is a considerably later than the fall of the Teotihuacán civilisation (around 750) (fig.7). Yet many of the elements found in Teotihuacán can again be seen in Tenochtitlan. For example, the latter also contains a Temple of the Sun, and a Temple of Quetzalcoatl (homologous to the Teotihuacán Temple of the Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcoatl meaning feathered serpent in Nahuatl). In addition to these, there is also the Templo Mayor (fig.8), the main temple of the city. All these temples have adopted the pyramid as their architectural form. The reason for such similarities is that, although the Aztecs and the Teotihuacán
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CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15
were separated in time, they shared similar beliefs and their religion originated from the same concepts and the same entities. The basin on which Tenochtitlan in built is surrounded by mountains (fig.9) to the east, south and west16. These mountains are sources of water in the rain period, and it is no wonder why the Aztecs consider these mountains as being sacred, as being where heaven and earth meet and thus as being the centre of the earth. Every temple is therefore, by extension, a sacred mountain, and this notion of mountain is translated architecturally through the pyramids. Templo Mayor, being the main temple of the city, is also the centre, and thus created a sacred space inside the ceremonial city. The platform part of the pyramid represents the terrestrial plane while the two temples at top (fig.8) are dedicated to two gods, Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and Tlaloc, the god of rain17. The pyramid rises by four levels to the temples, each level possibly representative of one of the four elements of the cosmos18. This configuration translates the role of this pyramid as the connection between heaven and earth, and thus its importance as the religious centre of the city. We have already discussed the relationship between pyramids (and by extrapolation, mountains) and rain. However, war was also an important aspect of religion. Just like in Teotihuacรกn, human sacrifices were a common religious practice among the Aztecs. The victims were mainly prisoners of war and slaves19, and sometimes citizens who lost in contests, and the need for this extensive number of victims resulted in extensive warfare20. The reason why a human sacrifice is often associated with pyramids is that victims are a tribute to their
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CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15
gods, and these offerings were delivered directly at the gateway of heaven. Another reason could cradle in the myth that Huitzilopochtli defeated two other gods and threw their dismembered bodies down the slopes and would stand triumphant at the top of the mountain21 (fig.10) – again we have this strong symbolical analogy between pyramids and mountains. The Aztecs were also keen astronomers, and like other cultures of Mesoamerica, they used astronomy, especially the sun, to dictate the position and orientation of their architectures. During the equinox, the sun would rise exactly between the Temples of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli22. As the centre of the sacred city, the Main Pyramid was the reference for everything built around it. The planning of Tenochtitlan was also heavily dictated by cosmology, with avenues dividing the city into four parts, representing the four cardinal points, or the four quadrants of the cosmos.
The reason why I chose Tenochtitlan and TeotihuacĂĄn as the focus cities of this essay is because they demonstrate very well that the architectural and planning languages that these cities have adopted were not left to chance. The fall of TeotihuacĂĄn and the founding of Tenochtitlan are separated by about 750 years, meaning that it was impossible for these two civilisations to have interacted. However, what we know is that, like most Mesoamerican cultures, they both worshipped Sun gods and Feathered Serpents, both were peoples with keen astronomical interests, both resorted to human sacrifices as religious practices and both cities had similar architectural languages. If
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CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15
each city is considered in isolation, we notice that each architectural form and each planning decision was informed by a particular belief. Considering that these two cities did not exist during the same period, we can conclude that both cultures had very strong relationships with the elements of nature – the earth, the water and the sky – irrespective of what prevailed in the other city. For example, while it can be argued that the Aztecs could have simply copied the grid layout of Teotihuacán while designing the plan of Tenochtitlan, it would have been impossible for them to replicate the same orientation if they were not already familiar with astronomy23 and if for them too orienting buildings relative to the heavens did not assume such a great religious importance. Teotihuacán and Tenochtitlan are only two cities chosen to demonstrate that even temporal separation did not falter the beliefs of the peoples of the Mexican Basin region - in actuality, all the other Mesoamerican cultures had similar beliefs, and cities like Chichén Itza (fig.11) and Tikal (fig 12), which were much further east, also adopted the same architectural languages of pyramids. Religion, based on the worship of deified figures and entities of nature, assumed a very important role in pre-Columbian America. Although the cultures of the Maya, the Aztec and the Teotihuacán slightly differed, the general framework of their religious beliefs was similar, and probably cradled from the cultures of the early Olmecs24. The purpose of comparing these civilisations in not simply to show that they had similar cultures ergo they had similar architectural languages. The crux of the argument is to demonstrate that, the fact that all these cities existed
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CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15
separately temporally and spatially and still adopted the same forms means that there was no lucky guess25 concerning how these cities were built, and that the architectural language was deeply rooted in the religious and social functions the buildings had to assume. The fact that this architecture was carried through space and time demonstrates that as long as the cultural and religious identities of the Mesoamerican civilisations survived, it would be those identities which would continue to inform the architecture and the planning in this region. We must also recognise that the complex relationship which existed among religion, social life, architecture and urban planning was not a linear one – while we can assume that initially it was the beliefs which informed architecture and planning, these in turn might have, over time, dictated new practices which would, even further down the time line, result in other architectural forms.
There are several reasons which could explain why architecture and planning in this region of pre-Columbian America adopted such a form. While the proximal reasons might lie in the beliefs derived from religion and mythology, the distal, and most influential ones, lie at the very heart of nature – caves, mountains, the sky, the sun. Although we have analysed the analogies which existed between these elements of nature, religion and mythology, the ultimate driver of such architecture might simply have been the wish and the need for these civilisations to live in harmony with nature and with their cosmos.
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CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15
Footnotes:
1. Esther Pasztory, ‘The Natural World as Civic Metaphor at Teotihuacán’ in The Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes, Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1992, p.138. 2. ibid., p.138 3. Pedro Rojas, The Art and Architecture of Mexico, Middlesex, The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, 1968, p.15. 4. Esther Pasztory, ‘The Natural World as Civic Metaphor at Teotihuacán’ in The Ancient Americas, p.142. 5. Geoffrey Jellicoe and Susan Jellicoe, The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment From Prehistory to the Present Day, London, Thames and Hudson, 1975, p.98. 6. John Ingham, ‘Human Sacrifice at Tenochtitlan’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.26, No.3, Jul. 1984, 379-400, p.379. 7. Esther Pasztory, ‘The Natural World as Civic Metaphor at Teotihuacán’ in The Ancient Americas, p.135. 8. Norman Carver, Silent Cities of Mexico and the Maya, Kalmazoo, Documan Press, 1986, p.12. 9. Vincent Scully, ‘The Natural and the Manmade’ Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol.46, No.2, Nov. 1992, 3053, pp. 30-31. 10. Francis Ching et al., A Global History of Architecture, New Jersey, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2007, p.221. 11. ibid., p.221. 12. Francis Ching et al., A Global History of Architecture, p.218. 13. Ivan Sprajc, ‘More on Mesoamerican Cosmology and City Plans’, Latin America Entiquity, Vol.16, No.2, Jun. 2005, 209-216, p.213. 14. Ivan Sprajc, ‘Astronomical Alignments at Teotihuacán, Mexico’, Latin America Entiquity, Vol.11, No.4, Dec. 2000, 403-415, p.406.
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15. Francis Ching et al., A Global History of Architecture, p.418. 16. Edouardo Moctezuma, The Aztec Main Pyramid: Ritual Architecture at Tenochtitlan’, The Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes, Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1992, p.187. 17. Edouardo Moctezuma, The Aztec Main Pyramid: Ritual Architecture at Tenochtitlan’, The Ancient Americas, p.193. 18. Edouardo Moctezuma, The Aztec Main Pyramid: Ritual Architecture at Tenochtitlan’, The Ancient Americas, p.192. 19. John Ingham, ‘Human Sacrifice at Tenochtitlan’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.26, No.3, Jul. 1984, 379-400, p.379. 20. Francis Ching et al., A Global History of Architecture, p.418. 21. Edouardo Moctezuma, The Aztec Main Pyramid: Ritual Architecture at Tenochtitlan’, The Ancient Americas, p.193. 22. Francis Ching et al., A Global History of Architecture, p.419. 23. Ivan Sprajc, ‘More on Mesoamerican Cosmology and City Plans’, Latin America Entiquity, Vol.16, No.2, Jun. 2005, 209-216, p.210. 24. Pedro Rojas, The Art and Architecture of Mexico, Middlesex, The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, 1968, p.12. 25. Edouardo Moctezuma, The Aztec Main Pyramid: Ritual Architecture at Tenochtitlan’, The Ancient Americas, p.195.
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Illustrations
Fig: 1 Source: http://www.andrewsinclair.co.uk/trav el/teotihuacan1.jpg
Fig: 2 Source: http://archaeology.asu.edu/teo/intro/ citymp2.htm
Fig: 3 Source: http://www.delange.org/Teo3/Dsc00 193.jpg
Fig: 4 Source: http://hiddenlighthouse.files.wordpre ss.com/2010/02/pyramid_of_the_su n_900.jpg
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CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15
Fig: 5 Source: Pedro Rojas, The Art and Architecture of Mexico
Fig: 7 Source: Richard Townsend, Art from Sacred Landscapes
Fig: 9 Source: http://www.aztechistory.net/media/map-oftenochtitlan.jpg
Fig: 6 Source: Ivan Sprajc, ‘Astronomical Alignments at Teotihuacán, Mexico’
Fig: 8 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rek onstruktion_Tempelbezirk_von_Ten ochtitlan_2_Templo_Mayor_3.jpg
Fig: 10 Source: Richard Townsend, Art from Sacred Landscapes 12
CHU SIN CHUNG Adrian 332874 Foundations of Architecture 702-242 Final Essay: 5 Toby Horrocks Thursday: 4:15
Fig: 11 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chic hen-Itza-Castillo-Seen-FromEast.JPG Fig: 12 Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikip edia/commons/thumb/0/06/Tikal_ Temple1_2006_08_11.JPG/250p xTikal_Temple1_2006_08_11.JPG
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