Ancient Wonders of North America: Tenochtitlan

Tenochtitlan is located where down town Mexico City is today.  It was originally built on an island.  Legend says the people were told to look for a place with an eagle on a cactus with a snake in its beak.  This is where they found the eagle.  Tenochtitlan means the place of the prickly cactus.  The city was built with canals through the city for travel from one spot to another.  The water was too salty to drink, so aqueducts were built to transport water.  The city was built in about 1325 AD.  This was the city to which Cortez was lead when he conquered the Aztecs.  Montezuma was worried about the legend of a white God appearing among them and for this reason Cortez was able to gain entry to the city. 

Ancient Wonders of North America: Teotihuacan

Seven Wonders of Ancient North America, Michael Woods and Mary B. Woods, Twenty-First Century Books, Minneapolis, MN, 2009.

Teotihuacan is an ancient Aztec city about thirty miles north of Mexico City.  It includes a Pyramid of the Sun, Pyramid of the Moon and Avenue of Death.  Teotihuacan was first settled in BC 100 and by 100 AD was the largest city in the New World with over 125,000 residents.  People are not sure where these people have gone, but the Aztecs claimed them as ancestors.  It is believed to have been burned and sacked in 550 AD and totally uninhabited a couple hundred years after this.  It could well have been a place where people from many different groups met.  The influence to Teotihuacan is very wide, with it obsidian products being traded extensively.

Today Teotihuacan is known because of its large pyramids.  Also there are ancient murals which are very well preserved.  At one time the actual city covered a broad area, and much of this is now covered by business and residences, and a military base.  Teotihuacan is also a UNESCO Heritage site.

Temple of the Incsriptions: Palenque: Seven Wonders of Ancient North America

Seven Wonders of Ancient North America, Michael Woods and Mary B. Woods, Twenty-First Century Books, Minneapolis, MN, 2009.

Temple of the Inscriptions is a Mayan ruin in Southern Mexico.  It is in the ancient Mayan city of Palenque.  This is a modern Spanish name.  The ancient name of the city is Lakamha meaning big water.  Inside the Temple of Inscriptions was found a stairway leading to a stone slab.  Under this slab was found the coffin of Pakal who ruled in the 600s.  He had a face mask covering his face which had been made of pieces of jade.  Pakal was identified because archeologist learned how to translate the inscriptions in the tomb.  After 900 ad the town was abandoned, and became overgrown and hid by vines.  The area as of 1930 has been a National Park.  It is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

Cliff Palace: Seven Wonders of Ancient North America

Seven Wonders of Ancient North America, Michael Woods and Mary B. Woods, Twenty-First Century Books, Minneapolis, MN, 2009.

Cliff Palace is part of the Mesa Verde archeological site and National Park.  This is the largest of the cliff dwelling in North America.  It was inhabited for about seventy-five years in the early 1200’s b the Anasazi or ancient Puebloans.  It is presumed that the dwelling was made on the cliff for protection from others as this was a time of great competition with other groups due to drought conditions and less resources.  It is also felt that the continuing drought also spelled the doom of the dwelling, as drought conditions made it so food was more and more scarce.  Cliff Palace has many kivas, or round religious rooms which often go into the ground.  The great quantity has led some to speculate that Cliff Palace may have been a religious center.  Cliff Palace was in ruins in the 1800s, but has since been restored by the National Park Service. 

Cahokia: Ancient Wonder of Ancient North America

Taken from Seven Wonders of North America by Michael and Mary B. Woods, Twenty-First Century Books, Minneapolis, MN, 2009.

artist rendition of Monk's Mound and playing area.

Cahokia was at one time the largest city in North America.  20,000 people resided in Cahokia.  At the time this was as large as the large European cities.  Cahokia was inhabited from about 1150 A.D. to the 1400s.  The people farmed the rich, fertile soil of the Mississippi basin.  This city was in the proximity of East St. Louis on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River.  The people of Cahokia were mound builders, but later than the mound builders of the Ohio region.  cahokia had distinct classes, a ruling class and the working class.  The ruling class ate better diet, and aged more slowly.  A skeleton was found inside a mound.  About sixty other people had been sacrificed and buried with him.  He appeared to be forty, but may have been older again because of his better diet his skeleton may have appeared younger than he was.
The largest mound in Cahokia was Monk's Mound, so called because monks later inhabited the area and farmed in the rich soil.  This mound was as big as the Egyptian and Mexican pyramids.  It would have taken years to build, as the workers would have hauled the dirt one load at a time.  There was also a large playing area nest to the mound for playing a sport called chunky.  It is assumed the people of Cahokia melded into the local tribes, but by the time Europeans arrived the city was deserted, and Europeans had a hard time grasping that the Indians really made such a town.

The Iroquois Confederacy: Ancient Wonder of North America

One of the Ancient Wonders mentioned in the book, "Seven Wonders of Ancient North America" is not a place or a thing, but an idea.  The idea of living peacefully.  The Native American groups of the northern New York area, spilling into Canada, lived a live of violence, fighting one group against another, which included cannibalism.  Hiawatha and the Peacemaker saw a different way.  Dreams played an important part.  The negotiated and brought five tribes together into a confederacy.  Originally five tribes joined the confederacy.  They were Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk.  They were joined later by a sixth, Tuscarora.  They were the confederacy of the long house.  The confederacy originally formed in the 1100s, and it is still going today, making it the longest democratic system in the world.  Ideas from the confederacy were used in shaping the Constitution.

Jellyfish Cove: Ancient Wonders of North America

This is taken from the book Seven Wonders of Ancient North America, Michael Woods and Mary B. Woods, Twenty-First Century books, Minneapolis, MN, 2009.


Jellyfish Cove (L'Anse aux Meadows)
This site is in Canada, Newfoundland.  What makes this site unique is dwellings left by the Vikings in North America.  For many years there was a legend of the Vikings coming to North America.  This site proves that they actually did.  It was discovered in 1960 by Norwegian archeologist Helge Ingstad.  He originally discovered mounds, and then he found a cooking pit.  Now there is a restored village.  It is thought the Vikings were there around 1000.  That would be almost 500 years before Columbus.