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More than two millennia ago, Teotihuacan was a thriving metropolis in central Mexico with up to 125,000 inhabitants. The city had gigantic pyramids and was a cultural center in Mesoamerica at the time.

But the city, which today consists of ruins and is a popular destination for both archaeologists and tourists, holds a great mystery. Who were its inhabitants?

Researchers Magnus Pharao Hansen and Christopher Helmke from the University of Copenhagen have presented a possible solution to the mystery in an article in Current Anthropology.

By analyzing the signs on Teotihuacan's colorful murals and many other artifacts, they have concluded that the signs constitute an actual writing system, and they believe that this writing records an early form of the Uto-Aztecan language, which a thousand years later developed into the languages Cora, Huichol, and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.

The Rome of Mesoamerica

Teotihuacan was founded about 100 BC and was a major cultural center in central Mexico until its fall about 600 AD. Hansen and Helmke compare the city to Rome, which was the center of the Roman Empire. In the same way, Teotihuacan had great cultural significance in ancient Mesoamerica.

But imagine if we had found ruins from the Roman Empire but knew nothing about the people who lived there. This is largely the case with Teotihuacan.

"There are many different cultures in Mexico. Some of them can be linked to specific archaeological cultures. But others are more uncertain. Teotihuacan is one of those places. We don't know what language they spoke or what later cultures they were linked to," says Hansen.

According to Helmke, a trained eye can easily distinguish Teotihuacan culture from other contemporary cultures. For example, the ruins in Teotihuacan show that parts of the city were inhabited by the Maya—a civilization that is much better known today than Teotihuacan.

The revival of a language

The ancient people of Teotihuacan left behind a series of signs, mainly as murals and decorated pottery. For years, researchers have debated whether these signs even constitute an actual written language.

Hansen and Helmke show that the writing on the walls of Teotihuacan is in fact a record of a language that is a linguistic ancestor of the Cora and Huichol languages and the Aztec language Nahuatl.

The Aztecs are another famous culture from Mexico. Until now, it was believed that the Aztecs migrated to central Mexico after the fall of Teotihuacan. However, Hansen and Helmke point to a linguistic connection between Teotihuacan and the Aztec, which could indicate that Nahuatl-speaking populations arrived to the area much earlier and that they are actually direct descendants of the inhabitants of Teotihuacan.

In order to identify the linguistic similarities between the language of Teotihuacan and other Mesoamerican languages, Hansen and Helmke had to reconstruct a much earlier version of Nahuatl.

"Otherwise, it would be a bit like trying to decipher the runes on the famous Danish runestones, such as the Jelling Stone, using modern Danish. That would be anachronistic. You have to try to read the text using a language that is closer in time and contemporary," says Helmke.

The rebus method

The Teotihuacan written language is difficult to decipher for several reasons. One reason is that the logograms that make up the script sometimes have a direct meaning, so that an image of a coyote, for example, should simply be understood to mean "coyote."

Elsewhere in the text, the signs must be read as a kind of rebus, where the sounds of the objects depicted must be put together to form a word, which may be more conceptual and therefore difficult to write as a single figurative logogram.

This makes it crucial to have a good knowledge of both the Teotihuacan writing system and the Uto-Aztecan language, which these researchers believe is recorded in the texts. It is necessary to know how the words sounded back then in order to solve the written puzzles of Teotihuacan.

That is why the researchers are working on several fronts. They are simultaneously reconstructing the Uto-Aztecan language, a difficult task in itself, and using this ancient language to decipher the Teotihuacan texts.

"In Teotihuacan, you can still find pottery with text on it, and we know that more murals will turn up. It is clearly a limitation to our research that we do not have more texts. It would be great if we could find the same signs used in the same way in many more contexts. That would further support our hypothesis, but for now we have to work with the texts we have," says Hansen.

Pooling brainpower

Hansen and Helmke are excited about their breakthrough. "No one before us has used a language that fits the time period to decipher this written language. Nor has anyone been able to prove that certain logograms had a phonetic value that could be used in contexts other than the logogram's main meaning. In this way, we have created a method that can serve as a baseline for others to build on in order to expand their understanding of the texts," says Hansen.

Their research has attracted attention among other international experts. The two UCPH researchers would like to host workshops to pool brainpower and further discuss the method with colleagues.

"If we are right, it is not only remarkable that we have deciphered a writing system. It could have implications for our entire understanding of Mesoamerican cultures and, of course, point to a solution to the mystery surrounding the inhabitants of Teotihuacan," says Helmke.