Was Teotihuacan Aztec or Mayan?

Neither: Teotihuacan was founded about 150 to 100 BCE and abandoned towards 650 CE, by people whose name and language are unknown. The Aztecs arrived in the 13th century. Maya people lived in parts of the city. In 378 CE a leader backed by the city entered Tikal.

The name you read on the signs is Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. It is younger than the city by centuries. The full chronology is on the history page.

Who lived at Teotihuacan?

More than 100,000 people at the peak of 350 to 550 CE, in the INAH count, from several regions of Mexico. The city had about 22 barrios, in the count of Linda Manzanilla. Merchants from Oaxaca, Michoacán and Veracruz had barrios of their own on the edge of the city. A 2015 study of ancient DNA from the Teopancazco compound showed the same mix.

INAH states that the builders’ own name for the city is unknown. So is their language. A 2025 paper in Current Anthropology proposed that the writing of the city records an early Uto-Aztecan language, an ancestor of Nahuatl. No independent test of the claim exists. Britannica takes the opposite position: the builders were not Aztecan speakers.

The city had more than 2,000 residential compounds. You can visit one of them, Tepantitla, with its murals.

What did the Aztecs have to do with Teotihuacan?

Nothing before the 13th century, when Nahua groups from the north found the city abandoned, in the INAH account. They gave the ruins the name around the 1300s. UNESCO translates it as the place where the gods were created.

The Mexica set the birth of the Fifth Sun, one of their founding myths, in the ruins. The Pyramid of the Sun you see was Tonatiuh Itzacual to them, roughly the enclosure of the Sun. Moctezuma made sacrifices at the site every 20 days, by 16th-century writings. UNESCO counts those beliefs as criterion vi of the 1987 World Heritage listing.

The Avenue of the Dead you walk, the Calzada de los Muertos, is a Mexica name as well. They read the 80 platforms along the open stretch as tombs. Britannica calls the buildings palace residences.

What was the link between Teotihuacan and the Maya?

In 378 CE Sihyaj K’ahk’, a leader backed by Teotihuacan, entered Tikal in the Maya Petén. The ties are older. A 2026 INAH book on the tunnel under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent dates ties with Maya sites to about 2,000 years ago. Before that book, the documented contact began in 300 to 400 CE.

The source for the Maya residents is a 2025 University of Copenhagen study of the ruins. The culture of the city was its own, neither Aztec nor Maya. UNESCO names Kaminaljuyu in Guatemala as the reach of its influence, under criterion ii.

From the gate: Gate 1, Puerta 1 on INAH’s map, 710 m and 10 minutes to the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, measured on the map. The temple went up about 100 to 250 CE. It carried more than 366 sculpted heads on its four façades. The heads you see on the west façade are the originals.

The Museum of the Great Teotihuacan Culture stands beside the gate and opened in June 2026. It is the first stop on the INAH trail from Gate 1. Your MX$210 ticket covers it and the other two museums.