Rise of Teotihuacan

A settlement arose here in the last centuries BC: the English Wikipedia dates the founding of the city to about 100 BC, while the Russian article speaks of a village by the 3rd century BC and a city by AD 1. Over the next two and a half centuries the city was laid out along a grand axis, the Avenue of the Dead, and its monuments were built continuously until about 250: the Pyramid of the Sun, one of the largest pyramids of Mesoamerica (dated to about 100 by the English article on Teotihuacan and the Russian article on the pyramid, or to about 200 by the English article on the pyramid), the Pyramid of the Moon and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

At its zenith, in the first half of the first millennium, Teotihuacan had more than 100,000 inhabitants, perhaps 125,000 or more: it was the largest city in the Americas and one of the six largest in the world. Its people lived in multi-family apartment compounds, and some neighbourhoods housed migrants, among them Tlailotlacan, a quarter settled from the Oaxaca region. The influence of Teotihuacan reached the Maya lands. Its centre was sacked and burned — around 550 according to the English Wikipedia, in the mid-7th century according to the Russian article — and by the middle of the 8th century the city was almost deserted.