Resumo

GARCIA, Enriqueta. Situaciones climáticas durante el auge y la caída de la Cultura Teotihuacana. Invest. Geog [online]. 1974, n.5, pp.35-69. ISSN 2448-7279.

In this brief paper we try to find some modern analogs of the past climates in order to explain the conditions which could have been the dominant ones during the great development of Teotihuacan. Similarly, we try to find in the climate a reason for the collapse of such a flowering culture. Several attempts have been made to know the circumstances for Teotihuacan's decline and fall; some authors agree that both: environmental and social facts were involved. Without trying to rest importance to the other factors, we will analyze only the climatic aspect, particularly from the point of view of precipitation correlating it with that from other regions of Europe and Africa, goberned by the Bermuda-Azores high pressure cell. With base on these correlations and on phenomenological and historical evidence to describe climatic situations during Teotihuacan's time in other parts of the world: northwestern Europe, Egypt and Yucatan, we deduce climatic fluctuations on the Teotihuacan area. The hypothesis that we formulate using all these data is that the climate during the great development of the culture in the Teotihuacan area was as humid as it can be during the most humid years at the present. We also assume that the decay and fall of Teotihuacan was due, in part, to the intense drought that started at about AD 700-750, as the relationship between climatic data and climatic proxies from Europe and north Africa suggest.