Cuicuilco

Cuicuilco was a major regional center in Central Mexico during the Preclassic period. The ruins located in the south of the Valley of Mexico in the metropolitan area of ​​Mexico City, just south of the campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, partly on the site of the Olympic Village for the Olympic Games of 1968.

The settlement was from the Middle Preclassic the dominant power in the Valley of Mexico and was one of the main competitors of the then relatively insignificant Teotihuacán. Probably the settlement gained its importance due to the fertile soil that could be well watered due to the existence of several small streams and thereby enabled rich harvests. It also became an important ceremonial and religious center. In the last century BC Cuicuilco was several meters thick covered with an eruption of the volcano with lava Xitle and deserted by its inhabitants. It is likely that many of them settled in Teotihuacán.

Archaeologists led by Byron Cummings led here 1922-1924 excavations. They found a large circular temple platform with multiple stages whose base has a diameter of not quite 150 meters. Presumably, the platform was used for religious purposes, to which the structures on the surface that are partially recessed point. From the west, a ramp leads to the second highest platform.

Later excavations in the sixties brought a number of similar, smaller platforms to light. In addition, we found a small statue made ​​of clay of a " fire of God ", whose worship can be detected even up to the time of the Aztecs, where he was named Huehueteotl.