Notes on the Maya and Teotihuacan

A previous article entitled "Robbers and Lamanites" explores some ideas about the relationship between Teotihuacan and the Book of Mormon. There are more.

My friend, Javier Tovar of Atotonilco de Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico, has been attending the III Encuentro Internacional de Mayistas (April 25 - May 31, 2022) in Teotihuacan. These notes come from him.

In Cacaxtla, a standard unit of distance measure has been discovered called the "zapal". It is 49.2 centimeters in length. The Book of Mormon mentions the cubit (3 Nephi 13:27). In the Old World, various cubits ranged from 44 to 53 centimeters in length. My late friend, V. Garth Norman (1934 - 2021) was keenly interested in cubit measures as evidence of ancient transoceanic contact between the Old World and the New. See his 2018 publication Cubit Connection in Ancient World Migrations.

Egyptian Cubit Rod in Museo Egizio, Turin, Italy

During construction of the new Felipe Ángeles Airport in Mexico City, a tomb was discovered containing Maya ceramics and other grave goods indicative of a Maya burial. Strong Maya influence was known from Cacaxtla and Teotihuacan. The airport find is the most northerly Maya location yet discovered in ancient Central Mexico. It is 1,032 air kilometers WNW of Tikal. As with all images on this blog, click to enlarge.

Sites with Maya Influence in Central Mexico

The Maya - Teotihuacan relationship is a subject of intense interest among archaeologists today. The recent discovery of a scale model of the Teotihuacan ciudadela in Tikal has convinced even the most hardened skeptics that a) Teotihuacan was a massive empire, and b) its influence was extensive and intensive in the fourth century AD. See Stephen Houston, Edwin Román Ramírez, Thomas G. Garrison, David Stuart, Héctor Escobedo Ayala, and Pamela Rosales, "A Teotihuacan complex at the Classic Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala" in Antiquity, Volume 95, Issue 384, December 2021. This is of interest to students of the Book of Mormon because the fourth century AD is when the Nephites met their demise at hill Cumorah at the hands of the Lamanites and the Gadianton robbers (Helaman 2:13, Mormon 2:28). The best current thinking is that the Lamanites were part of the Maya world and the Gadianton capital, Jacobugath, was part of the Teotihuacan empire in central Mexico. The fact that Teotihuacan forced a regime change at Tikal in AD 378 and quickly came to dominate lowland Maya politics is probably related to the Nephite extermination event ca. AD 385.

As another indication of Maya influence at Teotihuacan, a mural in the central Mexican metropolis has now been interpreted as depicting one of the hero twins shooting his blowgun, a scene described in the Popol Vuh. Another Teotihuacan mural shows an anthropomorphic plant, a Mesoamerican cultural construct referenced in Alma 32:28 - 33:1. See the blog article "Anthropomorphic Trees".

A recent study of meat consumption at central Mexican sites yielded borrego cimarron (sheep - ovis canadensis) in a late classic (AD 600 - 900) context at Tula, Hidalgo. This is 1,800 air kilometers south of the animal's current range. See Raúl Valadez Azúa and Bernardo Rodríguez Galicia, "Uso de la Fauna, Estudios Arqueozoológicos y Tendencias Alimentarias en Culturas Prehispánicas del Central de México" in Anales de Antropolgía, Volume 48, Number 1, 2014. This article highlights domesticated animals as an important food source in the diets of ancient central Mexicans. For an image of animal pens at El Mirador, see the blog article "Flocks and Herds".

Thanks to Professor Javier Tovar for bringing these interesting data points to my attention.