The Mesoamerican connection: Cuicuilco, the Pompei of the Americas

Although the word “Maya” probably comes first in layman’s minds when thinking of pre-European civilizations in the New World, there were many other advanced cultures in Mexico. The irrefutable evidence of direct cultural contact – namely Maya words and domestic architecture – only occur in the original homeland of the Creek Indians: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, western North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee and eastern Alabama. The Hitchiti branch of the Creeks also shows some linguistic evidence of cultural contacts with the Totonac and Tamau peoples on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. In the Mississippi Basin and the Southwestern United States, evidence of contacts with Mesoamerica is generally less pronounced and seems to point toward the highlands of Central Mexico as its source.

Archaeologists currently think that the first settlement to reach “city scale” in central Mexico was Cuicuilco. The community was located on the southern shore of Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. It is in the Colonia Coyacan section of Mexico City today. However, today urban development and drainage projects have shrunk Lake Texcoco to the size where it is not even visible from the Cuicuilco archaeological zone. At its probable peak size around 150 AD, the city contained at least 20,000 people. It may have been larger, because much of the archaeological zone was developed into office buildings and industries before archaeologists could thoroughly study the site.

Cuicuilco began as a small farming and fishing village around 750 BC; that’s 850 years AFTER the founding of Poverty Point, Louisiana and 650 years after the earliest town in the Olmec civilization. It seems to have been a center of agricultural experimentation and improvement. As cultivated crops became more productive and diverse, Cuicuilco grew in population. The plentiful rainfall, year round mild climate and rich volcanic soils made possible the accumulation of a dense population. There is also evidence of cultural contacts with the Zoque on the Gulf Coasts. Initially, artistic styles in the two regions were very similar, but when the Olmec ceremonial centers were abandoned around 450 BC, the Valley of Mexico developed its own distinct artistic traditions.

The development pattern of Cuicuilco became distinctly different than Zoque, and later, Maya towns. It was much more compact and “urban.” The Zoque and Maya built impressive complexes of public buildings and elite, but the residential zones of the commoners were dispersed into hamlets surrounded by gardens and small corn fields that sprawled outward from the centers for long distances. However, at Cuicuilco, residential areas were continuous. Each home had a garden, but much larger cultivated fields were maintained along the edge of Lake Texcoco. Apparently, many farmers “commuted” to work.

Cuicuilco was also one of the first or first towns in Mexico to construct stone architecture. Located in a volcanic zone, dense rocks of all sizes were available for building walls or veneering mounds. The so-called pyramids at Cuicuilco were really earthen mounds veneered with field stones. Most were on the same scale as what had been built in the Southeastern United States for the previous 3000 years. The one exceptional structure at Cuicuilco is a round, terraced temple mound that was constructed on the highest hill in the city. The people of Cuicuilco also constructed plazas, rainwater retention ponds, causeways and fortifications.

The rich volcanic soil around Cuicuilco was one of the primary reasons for its prosperity, but also inevitably sealed its doom. Around 150 AD a volcano on the edge of the Valley of Mexico erupted. All of Cuicuilco was covered with lava. Superheated steam and pumice from the eruption apparently did severe damage to nearby towns, since archaeological evidence suggests that the entire Lake Texcoco Basin was temporarily uninhabited. Otherwise, Cuicuilco may have continued to grow for many more centuries.

Source: The Examiner [April 17, 2010]