For a long time, Teotihuacan was understood as an essentially peaceful society, governed by priestly elites who organized communal life through ritual and the redistribution of goods. The burials uncovered beneath the Feathered Serpent Temple profoundly altered that interpretation.

In the first half of the 1980s, archaeologists identified numerous human burials around the pyramid, including two groups of twenty individuals each located on the south and north sides respectively. The bodies had been deposited in deep pits cut directly into the bedrock and sealed beneath the building's earliest floor, placing them within some of Teotihuacan's earliest phases, around 150–200 CE. Subsequent excavations significantly expanded the number of burials identified, and ongoing research suggests that the total will likely continue to grow.

Who they were

These burials did not correspond to anonymous prisoners or enslaved individuals. The people interred were between 20 and 40 years old at the time of their death. Those deposited closest to the center of the temple were older and wore richer, more elaborate attire: necklaces composed of shell beads shaped like teeth, along with earrings and pectorals fashioned from human jawbones—some authentic, others crafted in shell as anatomical imitations.

Beyond the clothing and ornamentation, the offerings included spear points and other objects associated with warfare, leading researchers to conclude these individuals were warriors—possibly of high rank—rather than ordinary captives. Isotopic studies conducted on bones and teeth have further revealed that some of those who were sacrificed originated from regions outside the Teotihuacan Valley.

Not all of the burial groups were composed of male individuals. Burial 11, for instance, contained four women between 16 and 21 years of age, deposited in an extended position with their arms placed behind their backs, oriented toward the east and south. Burial 16, located on the north side of the temple, contained eight women between 16 and 49 years old, arranged in a seated position and likewise with their arms placed behind them.

Symmetry as message

What makes these burials truly singular is not only their number, but also the deliberate arrangement of the bodies. They were deposited symmetrically, oriented toward the four cardinal directions and the intermediate quadrants of the building, following a distribution that appears to map the four cosmogonic regions of the Mesoamerican universe. The warrior groups are organized in sets of 9, 13, and 18 individuals—numbers of profound significance within the Mesoamerican calendrical system. Nine corresponds to the lords of the underworld; thirteen, to those of the heavens; and eighteen, to the months of the 365-day solar calendar. The dead were not arranged at random. They were positioned as figures within a cosmological program inscribed in stone and flesh.

The piece at the National Museum of Anthropology

Among the objects recovered in these excavations is a ritual insignia discovered in Burial 6a, dated to around 150 CE and now housed at the National Museum of Anthropology. The piece consists of a garment adorned with rectangular pendants made from the shells of Spondylus princeps, a species native to the Pacific Ocean. It was worn by one of the sacrificed individuals as part of the temple's complex burial-offering assemblage. Spondylus shell was among the most highly valued materials in the pre-Hispanic world, closely associated with water and fertility. Its Pacific origin points to exchange networks that extended across thousands of kilometers.