Deep in the rainforest of Veracruz, Mexico is a huge seven-story pyramid, commonly known as the “Pyramid of the Niches”. It is 20 meters high, has a total of 365 rock cavities, is the most important vestige of El Tajin – the ancient city hiding a civilization that has disappeared from Earth.
El Tajin existed in the years 800-1200, once the most important trading area in northeastern Central America.
It is still not clear which race is the ruler of this ancient city
It is known that the culture of El Tajin not only influenced the key valleys and plateaus of Mexico, but also extended its impact on the coast and on the Mayan civilization.
However, who is the real owner of this civilization, historians and archaeologists have not dared to confirm. They only assume that, El Tajin was built by the ancestors of two indigenous peoples of Mexico today, Totonac and Huastec.
According to archaeologists’ estimates, El Tajin numbered between 15,000 and 20,000 people.
Among the remains of El Tajin, the most important is the Pyramid of the Niches, a pyramid 20 m high. It has 4 sides, including 7 floors, with stairs to climb to the top.
They built pyramids with large slabs of rock, some weighing up to 8 tons
The pyramid of the niches is also known as the honeycomb pyramid because each side of the pyramid is dense with small niches. The building has a total of 365 niches (excluding the niches on the stairs), apparently an astronomical structure to calculate the date of the year.
The whole Pyramid of the Niches is built of stone. Each plate is carefully cut, some weighing around 8 tons.
Traders in El Tajin constantly carry household goods such as stone bottles (to make weapons), jade (to make jewelry) and food items such as vanilla, fruit, corn, cocoa. … outside. Most likely, the citadel of El Tajin is also the first civilization that knows how to cultivate and use vanilla orchids to create a vanilla flavor.
Thanks to its rich natural resources and exclusive rights to certain trade routes, El Tajin quickly prospered. However, around 1200, they were again trampled and pillaged by the Aztec Empire.
May have disappeared due to the atrocities of the Aztec Empire
Horrified by the overwhelming and cruel army of the Aztec armies, the city of El Tajin surrendered. Their descendants may have been forced to disperse the trails, rendering this civilization inevitably wiped out.
El Tajin has been completely abandoned. Dense forest gradually encroached on it, eventually covering this ancient city with dense foliage.
It wasn’t until 1785 that El Tajin was accidentally rediscovered. Since that time, it quickly rose to fame, considered an architectural masterpiece in Central America.
Also hidden by the jungle, this ancient city is still as delicate as it was when it first began. Time washed away the paint on the surface of the honeycomb pyramid, but did not cause any loss of the stone slabs.
Come to Veracruz and you will see, in this tropical forest, amazing ancient structures, extremely splendid and incredibly beautiful.
