CUICUILCO, MEXICO
Few people make the 12-mile drive from downtown to Cuicuilco, but the site's surprising and enigmatic history makes it well worth the trip. "Cuicuilco is central Mexico's first true city," says Boston University archaeologist David Carballo.
Cuicuilco was settled around 800 B.C. by early farmers who were already living in sedentary village communities. Over the next millennium, it grew until it was home to a population of 20,000 who thrived in this relatively lush area by channeling water to irrigate their land and for use in domestic and religious spaces. "Cuicuilco may be the best example in the center of Mesoamerica of a complex early society with a well-organized hydraulic agricultural system," says archaeologist Alejandro Pastrana of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.
This story is from the July/August 2023 edition of Archaeology.
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This story is from the July/August 2023 edition of Archaeology.
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