About an hour north east from Puebla is one of the largest ancient Mesoamerican cities called Cantona. It contains an extensive network of roads and home plots combined with many ceremonial buildings. It is estimated that less then 10% of the site has been uncovered.

The city was built primarily on a lava flow and rises above the surrounding flat lands. The city is laid out with the common people living in the low areas with the higher elevations for increasing status. The highest parts of the city are where the ceremonial temples and ball courts are mostly located. The city was active between 600 and 1000 AD and was abandoned sometime after 1050 AD for unknown reasons.

Cantona creates a network of 500 cobblestone roads, over 3000 individual patios (sites where wood houses used to sit on) and 24 ball courts. The residents were mostly farmers but also included trades people mainly working making products from obsidian.


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Museo De Sitio De Cantona

The small but very nice museum at the entrance contains many interesting artifacts uncovered at the site. They do a pretty good job of showing what life in this city may have been like.

This city was a source of obsidian and obsidian products. The museum contains many examples of knives and arrow heads made from the volcanic material.

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Lake Alchichica

On the way back Patrick showed me a very interesting crater lake that has some interesting calcium features. Turns out the calcium mounds are created by a bacteria that for some reason secretes small amounts of calcium. Over many years the calcium builds up into these hard mounds.

There is a nice write-up about the bacteria at Wikipedia: Lake Alchichica.

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