Abstract
Teotihuacan was the first urban civilization of Mesoamerica and one of the largest of the ancient world. Following a tradition in archaeology to equate social complexity with centralized hierarchy, it is widely believed that the city’s origin and growth was controlled by a lineage of powerful individuals. However, much data is indicative of a government of co-rulers, and artistic traditions expressed an egalitarian ideology. Yet this alternative keeps being marginalized because the problems of collective action make it difficult to conceive how such a coalition could have functioned in principle. We therefore devised a mathematical model of the city’s hypothetical network of representatives as a formal proof of concept that widespread cooperation was realizable in a fully distributed manner. In the model, decisions become self-organized into globally optimal configurations even though local representatives behave and modify their relations in a rational and selfish manner. This self-optimization crucially depends on occasional communal interruptions of normal activity, and it is impeded when sections of the network are too independent. We relate these insights to theories about community-wide rituals at Teotihuacan and the city’s eventual disintegration.
Highlights
Teotihuacan was a metropolis in the Valley of Mexico
If Teotihuacan consisted of a diverse and polycentric network of communities, potentially represented by their Three-Temple Complexes (TTCs), could this network not have relied on a form of self-government rather than on a centralized coercive state? In the following we address this question by analyzing a minimalist mathematical model that makes it at least formally conceivable that Teotihuacan’s political consensus emerged from a distributed coalition that was not subject to one central institution
There is no necessity to assume the existence of a lineage of powerful rulers to explain the origins of Teotihuacan
Summary
Teotihuacan was a metropolis in the Valley of Mexico. Starting around 100 AD, it rapidly grew into the largest city of Mesoamerica of the first millennium. At its peak Teotihuacan was one of the largest population centers of the world. Population estimates vary greatly, but a conservative estimate is that by 150 AD the city’s population had reached a plateau of between 80,000 and 100,000 inhabitants [2]. Later, beginning around 200 AD, more than 2000 large-scale residential units were built to accommodate most of the population, including all socioeconomic statuses [4]. These were solid, roofed structures with open patios and drainage. Cowgill [5] estimates that the mean number of domestic units per compound was between three and five, and that on average there were between five and twelve persons in a unit
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