Teotihuacán as a solar city in its graphic representation.

In this work, we present a proposal for the identification of the origin of the name of the pre‐Columbian urban center of Teotihuacan, the city of gods, based on its toponym structured in geographic accidents or the work of its inhabitants. A historical investigation was carried out, contrasted with an ethnohistorical work and, finally, a series of field observations. We concluded that the name Teotihuacán corresponds to the image registered in the Codex Xólotl, corresponding to a real, observable and measurable event, which is the sunrise located behind the three main buildings of the city, on certain dates of the year, which tells us that the entire city was designed, thought and planned on basis of the sun′s movement in the sky. This is not a new fact, frequently observed in other ancient sites in Mesoamerica. However, in the particular case of Teotihuacan, these events were of such importance and so unique that they lead us do not to discard the idea that the city constituted a great stone clock and a stone calendar, and that it was an unique mark for all inhabitants of the central plateau of Mesoamerica during the classical period. And that even in the post‐classical period it was still remembered precisely as such, as the City of the Sun, a singular place where one can perfectly see the solar alignments at different periods of the year, which are also related to the dry or rainy seasons of the central plateau, associated with the corresponding agricultural cycles. And this leads us to conjecture that the Teotihuacan knowledge of astronomy and agricultural cycles was an important mark of this city, bringing together all the knowledge in turn gathered in these fields by the other civilizations of Mesoamerica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]