Tehuacalco

Tehuacalco is an archaeological site in the Sierra Madre del Sur between Chilpancingo and Acapulco, a few kilometres off the Autopista del Sol near Tierra Colorada. It sits on a broad rise ringed by higher hills, and its builders treated that setting as sacred: four of the hills, Compuerta, Capulín, Tierra Colorada and Gavilpan, line up with the cardinal directions, and the sun rising behind Compuerta and the peaks beside it marked the equinoxes and solstices. INAH describes it as a ceremonial centre for the worship of water, hills, the sun and fertility, part of an 80-hectare settlement whose main buildings cover 12 hectares.

The site is linked to the Yopes, the people of the region the Nahuas called Yopitzingo, one of the few areas the Aztecs never managed to conquer. Building began shortly before AD 650, the great platforms went up over the following centuries and the city peaked around the year 1000; from about 1350, fighting between groups in the region led people to leave, although some caves and temples were still used for rituals afterwards. The name probably comes from Nahua groups who arrived after the Conquest and may mean 'place of the stone box' or 'place of the temples of water'. It was excavated in 2006 and 2007, the first Yope site to be studied in depth, and opened to the public in 2008.

Pyramid bases and palaces surround a large rectangular plaza. The Palace, the biggest building, has a base about 80 m on each side and was built to copy the outline of Cerro La Compuerta behind it. A ritual causeway with carved rain symbols on its steps climbs from the Palace to the Main Temple, a shrine to the rain on the most sacred hill, where a possible sacrificial stone was found. The ball court, about 38 m long, runs north to south towards that temple rather than east to west as most do. Look also for the Piedra de los Pies Labrados, a granite boulder with carved human footprints that local legend credits to a giant called Tehua, and for blocks with spirals, raindrops and Venus symbols set into the walls. An introductory room at the entrance explains the site.