Teotihuacan Holiday

Wonder is difficult to come by these days, but it's right there in full view in "Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire," a new exhibition at the de Young Museum which brings the ruins of a long-ago, not-so-far-away, exotic culture back from the dead. Many of us have been hungering for this kind of show, a large-scale voyage deep into the past more easily found at New York's Metropolitan Museum than in San Francisco of late.

The contents of this impressively mounted presentation come courtesy of archaeological discoveries, some quite recent, at the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan. Venerated by the Aztecs, the much-visited eight-square-mile site in Mexico was established in the first century BCE about 30 miles outside what's now Mexico City. At its apex in 400 CE, the highly organized complex was the epicenter of cultural, economic and religious life in Mesoamerica, where more than 100,000 multi-ethnic peoples once resided and thrived. Amidst the bustling city's wide boulevards and sprawling compounds, colossal pyramids were erected. The three biggest of them: The Feathered Serpent, whose surface was covered in carvings of its slithering namesake; and the larger Moon and Sun pyramids, yielded the bulk of show's more than 200 artifacts, including remnants of grand building facades carefully resurrected in the galleries, elaborate "incensarios," jade burial offerings and sculptures, ritual and utilitarian. The goggle-eyed, decidedly unfriendly visage of a perturbed storm god, a central deity branded on a multitude of vessels, is a ubiquitous presence, along with ceramic representations of the Old Fire God with ornate headdress, Maize gods evoked in enigmatic masks in an array of materials, and a ceramic avian effigy that's part agitated rooster, part cook pot.

In 2003, the remarkable discovery of a man-made tunnel as long as a football field underneath the Feathered Serpent pyramid led to a chamber containing a treasure trove of objects. The sacred passageway symbolizes the cosmic underworld. Built during an era of violent conquest (ca. 250 CE), the site became a burial ground that accommodated over 200 human sacrifices. Victims of this ritual bloodlust wore necklaces of human teeth and jawbones; the position of their remains, we're told, suggests they were bound before they met their gruesome fate. What a way to go.

Spreading across some 500,000 square feet, the four-tiered Sun pyramid, at 200 feet high, is the vast complex's largest structure, and purportedly one of the most massive in the ancient world. Some extraordinary pieces were excavated there, like a smooth, iridescent, classically proportioned standing figure of variegated greenstone, no less stunning for missing its head, both arms and portions of its legs. On the monumental end of the spectrum, there's not quite half of a circular stone relief with a skull at the center, unearthed near an altar.

Among the precious objects retrieved from the Moon pyramid: A primitive mosaic burial figurine surrounded by a circular firing squad of 18 undulating serpents or blades carved from obsidian. Upon the completion of the seventh phase of the pyramid in 400 CE, there was yet another orgy of human and animal sacrifices to appease the gods. But all good things must come to an end. The Xalla compound, a center of the ruling elite with numerous plazas, temples and architecture adorned with statuary, was devastated by a roaring fire in 550 CE that engulfed the core of the city. One of the conflagration's casualties was a growling mosaic jaguar forged from volcanic stone, emerging from a palace entryway with paws extended forward. Intentionally dismantled and its fragments scattered, the colorfully painted symbol of feline power has since been reassembled. The last man standing, though, may have been the haunting, flattened marble sculpture of a naked, hollow-eyed male figure just under five feet tall, displayed in the final gallery. In addition to being singed, it was mutilated and smashed into 160 pieces, apparently destroyed by an intruder who knew where to find it. Evidence indicates it's an embodiment of a ritual linked to the god of war in which a captive military officer was stripped, lashed to scaffolding and finished off with arrows.

The cataclysmic event signaled the beginning of the end for Teotihuacan. In rapid succession, the regional behemoth collapsed, its population fled, and it ceased to be the dominant force it had been for 400 years. Fortunately, the site's legacy, preserved and mined by a team of diligent archaeologists, lives on.

Through Feb. 11. famsf.org