TV EPISODE

[Music] these are the people of mexico city their history runs in their blood and underlies the very streets of their city there is a direct line running backward in time from these people to the unexplained silence of this ancient and mysterious city teotihuacan we'll follow that line today as discovery visits the valley of mexico [Music] [Applause] [Music] discovery 69 the award-winning program for young people with bill owen and virginia gibson many north americans can trace their family backgrounds to europe and once they've determined the place where their forebears lived ireland germany or perhaps england it's an easy matter to learn something of the way they lived but this pattern doesn't hold true for our nearest neighbors to the south in mexico these are mexican families out for a sunday picnic their language and their names are spanish but the spanish influence is only a part of the story of the people of mexico like everybody else they have a certain amount of curiosity about their origins if we needed proof of that it could be found any day of the week but particularly on sundays at a remarkable institution in mexico city's chapultepec park this is mexico's museo nacional de antropologia the national museum of anthropology it's only been open since 1964 but it's already taken its place among the great museums of the world part of the reason is its beauty set comfortably in mexico city's largest park chapultepec it's a subtle reflection of the heritage of the people of this country [Music] the aztecs were the last indian civilization in mexico and it was they who faced the spaniards of hernan cortes the conquistadores the conquerors there was an aztec chant which spoke of the bulrushes where we were born and it went on the world belongs to the aztecs if the world no longer belongs to them the aztecs are at least not forgotten this lagoon is a symbol of their existence now the bulrushes grow in the lagoon and that prideful claim the world belongs to the aztecs appears in bronze letters over the door to the aztec hall the intention of the museo nacional is to help mexico and the world to better understand the mexican past perhaps it would be better to say the indian past because the turning point in mexican history is the date of the arrival of the spanish the year was 1519. it took cortes 23 years to conquer mexico but the date of this coming is a key date because nothing was ever the same thereafter [Music] the spanish part of the mexican story is well known and thoroughly documented because the spanish kept diaries and records the mystery the portion which this museum in a way is dedicated to clarifying began centuries earlier mexico today is the heir to two distinct civilizations and possesses a culture which is a combination of both there was a complicated history here long before the spaniards came mesoamerica or middle america includes a large part of the mexican republic here live the olmecs the teotihuacanos the aztecs the mixtecs the mayas and more their descendants still live in mexico today they flourished rose and then fell or were combined with other people but all of them have left clear-cut reminders that they were here this polychrome many colored pottery is readily recognizable to an expert as a product of the mixtex these clay urns are the work of the people known as zapotex [Music] [Applause] only the teotihuacanos left mural paintings like these [Music] and it was the myers who made steli like these the toltecs at tula made statues like these and no one else ever did if it all ended with the coming of cortez when had it begun [Music] this is the earliest known piece of mesoamerican art it's a fossil bone of an extinct type of camel related to the south american llama the vertebra has been reworked to resemble the head of a coyote it dates to 10 000 bc there's further proof of the presence of man in early mexico he's called to pexpan man and he's one of the most important discoveries ever made in the valley of mexico mexico's first occupants were hunters who tracked down the large mammals of the pleistocene age they forced their prey into bogs and swamps where they would be helpless and fall easily once they were partially immobilized by the mud we don't know who sat and patiently carved that llama vertebra until it resembled coyotes he had so frequently seen but soon there were works of art whose creators we can identify this colossal head is olmec this sort of artifact was found all across southern mesoamerica between 1300 and 800 bc the village began to be known during this period and the art reflected it the olmecs produce figurines which give us an idea of what the life of the period was like [Music] we know that in a search for ideal beauty or what they thought was beautiful the olmecs mutilated the shapes of their heads by binding babies heads with boards they carved and mutilated their teeth shaved heads painted and tattooed their faces in their bodies we know they wore hats and turbans and that they wore necklaces and earplugs short skirts and loin cloths [Music] the olmecs began a calendar a numbering system and picture writing their influence spread over much of mexico and down into central america but few of their sites their locations are left to us there are earth mounds and a few stone monuments but time has moved harshly across the world of the olmecs it was later that an ancient city was built destined to come down to us in astoundingly complete form right here in the valley of mexico it was a world of feathered serpents and symbolic butterflies it was above all the new world's first great city and we'll go there in just a minute this is hall number five of mexico city's great museum of anthropology this room is devoted to a civilization whose remains are only 31 miles to the north of mexico city itself the story of teotihuacan begins about 500 bc or perhaps even earlier at that time there were villages scattered here and there the people made pottery and worked the land they were farmers and then for a reason that's lost to us at some point between 200 bc and 150 a.d the people of teotihuacan began to do something extraordinary they began to build a city [Music] what it really was was a ceremonial and religious center in the heart of the valley they built pyramids one in honor of the sun and another in honor of the moon we call these vanished people teotihuacanos simply because their city has been named teotihuacan but even the name is arbitrary it's what the aztecs who came afterwards just before the spanish called it but what was it actually called and who were its people no one really knows [Music] let's look carefully at one of the pyramids the one which is a kind of signature for the place because of its size and dominance to begin with the pyramid didn't look quite like this when the city was alive there was a temple on top and the pyramid was only a base for it with the temple the height of the pyramid was 243 feet just half as high as the pyramid of chiops in egypt [Music] [Music] when the spaniards came through here the pyramids must have seemed to be grassy hills or mounds but originally the sides were covered with stucco the stones which project from the sides of the pyramids have caused a great deal of speculation among visitors it was even supposed by some people that these were posts on which human sacrifices were displayed but there was never any evidence of human sacrifice at teotihuacan and these stones turn out to be nothing more spectacular than slabs to hold a thick coat of mortar in place these structures taken as a whole are called the citadel but one of them held a secret for many years inside the four layered main pyramid there was another structure older and more important the inner building was made with elaborately carved stones and decorated with two major sculptures repeated and repeated these are of great importance in the story of ancient mexico one is probably the rain god flallock his eyes were large obsidian discs and even now a few of them remain in place alternating with tilalic are carvings of the most famous mythic symbol of ancient mexico the feathered serpent caitlyn quaddle the pyramids the courtyards and the temples formed a kind of inner city where probably no one lived or where at the most a few priests lived but teotihuacan was a city and half a mile from the center are the remains of residential areas this is one of them its name is tepantitla it may tell us more about the life that was lived here than all the pyramids and temples put together [Music] inside the house there's a painting on each side of the main door and in the right hand painting high on the wall there is again what is thought to be talala the rain god drops symbolizing rain or falling from his hands the most famous mural at te pantilla is called lollips earthly paradise it's badly eroded by weather a better example of what it really looked like is available at the museum in mexico city there's a lake at the bottom out of which flow two rivers on the riverbanks there are fruit trees and people are bathing or swimming [Music] some are dancing some are singing [Music] and some are catching butterflies [Music] museum experts can restore color and form but they cannot always clarify meaning when there simply is not enough of a key to begin with they have provided us with an indoor model of the facade of queso cotto's palace with the colors as they were almost two thousand years ago but they haven't yet found a way to interpret beyond question the meaning of the sculptures or the life and language of the people who made them we'll be back in just a minute perhaps there's no place in all of mexico city which so specifically embodies the nature of the country as this la plaza de las tres cultures the place of the three cultures the aztecs had been a poor tribe from the north they entered the valley of mexico toward the end of the 13th century about 400 years after the decline of teotihuacan they were slaves then mercenaries and then by virtue of a revolution conquerors it was the aztecs who were in power when the spaniards came just about here was the aztec commercial center talataloko where the aztecs made their last sad stand against the conquering spaniards and it was here that the spaniards built one of the earliest churches in new spain the colonial church of santiago tolata loco to represent the third culture modern mexico these apartment buildings and offices were built [Music] the aztecs when they realized that the spaniards presented a force which was stronger than they were composed a song of their sorrow one verse of it contained these words will i leave only this like the flowers that wither will nothing last in my name nothing of my fame here on earth at least flowers at least [Music] as it happens the aztecs left mexico and mexico city a great deal more than flowers and songs one of the most important discoveries of the aztec past is this huge sun stone depicting the sun god and the four phases of the creation and destruction of the universe in aztec mythology it was found in the city's main square in 1790 and it waited a century and three quarters before it found its home here as the central object in the museum's largest room the aztec hall this crouching stone jaguar was once a central figure in the aztec sacrificial ceremonies the hole in his back was filled with human hearts torn out of the living victims with a knife of obsidian their priests told the aztecs that without a flow of sacrificed hearts the sun would dim and the world would end when the spaniards came in 1519 they found a thriving aztec society with a market which museum craftsmen have reconstructed the marketplace at lotto local was a large area of polish pavement with arcades on all sides each product was concentrated in a single place one area might be entirely for the same kind of vegetables and women would sit on mats watching their goods the chief items raised by the aztecs and sold here were corn beans squash and chili peppers [Music] in another area snakes which were often eaten by the aztecs were displayed for sale [Music] armadillos turtles and iguanas were also a regular part of the aztec [Music] diet [Music] there was the slave auction the aztecs raided other areas and brought back members of other tribes as slaves some were aztecs themselves had been judged guilty of crimes some wore wooden collars and the ones who did not were in all probability unfortunate men who had sold themselves to get out of debt the aztecs had no money so everything was done through barter the cocoa bean had a set value and so it formed a kind of yardstick against which transactions could take place the aztecs were extremely fond of chocolate the word itself chocolate comes from the aztec language [Music] there were warriors who prowled through the marketplace acting as policemen [Music] if there was an argument between a buyer and a seller there was a court here one of the elders of a clan or some other tribal authority would settle the [Music] question [Music] today's mexican markets have a certain similarity to those banished aztec days so many of the people who buy and sell are probably unaware of it [Music] mexico city's past is very much a part of its present there are murals and monuments reminding the people of the struggle it took to produce the new mexico according to bernal diaz del castillo who kept a diary during the cortez expedition in 1519 some of the soldiers seeing the city for the first time asked whether the things we saw were not a dream no it wasn't a dream but it was and still is a reality compounded of so many cultures and so many layers that some of them are lost in a haze that may seem dreamlike [Music] the truth of today's mexico is that it's a civilization all its own part indian part spanish but possessed of an individuality one at a high cost we'll be back in just a minute [Music] we hope you've enjoyed today's visit to mexico city in the national museum of anthropology if you'd like to find out more about mexico then ask a librarian for any of these books cortez and montezuma by maurice collis fairy tales of mexico and this book cortez and the conquest of mexico be sure to be with us next week as discovery visits the mexican state of yucatan to trace the history of one of the most fascinating of all the vanished civilizations the mayas bye bye bye [Music] the discovery unit's transportation and promotional consideration provided by aeronauticis de mexico [Music] this has been the jules power production in association with abc news you