The De Young Museum: Teotihuacan

by Lily Gabler and Cintli Covarrubias

On January 26, the entire Rise Prep class went to the Botanical Gardens and the De Young Museum. The outside of the De Young looked like it was from a different planet because it looked slippery and blocky. It was also a dark bear brown fur coat color.

In the museum, we saw different types of statues, jewelry, and miniature figurines. Some of those things were the statues found pointing to the center of the city. They were meant to be the guardians that watched over the offerings to the gods. We went to the museum to study the artifacts found in Teotihuacan. Studying the artifacts was important because we were able to learn and know more about what happened hundreds of millions of years ago.

As a city, Teotihuacan began around 150 B.C. and collapsed sometime in the seventh century A.D.. During that time, it was probably the most powerful city in all of North America, dominating even the Classic Maya, who were their lowland contemporaries far to the east in what is now called southern Mexico and Guatemala. It was very interesting to see all the artifacts that were found in Teotihuacan.

Another most extraordinary thing we saw were the obsidian human figurines. The first time I looked at them, I thought they were some of the offerings, but then read the template, and it told me that they were the figurines that boys had made and used to tell stories and to play with.

The last thing we saw were the paintings in a wing of the museum. “Some of those paintings people found weird and inappropriate. But some were very beautiful landscapes and portraits of very important people. I found them interesting,” said student Mariah Bess. A lot of the landscapes were of countrysides or busy city centrals. Everyone was amazed.

In the Botanical Gardens we saw fabulous things. One of the most beautiful things we saw were the magnolias. When we looked at them, they were in all sorts of colors. There were purple, red, white, and pink. A lot of people thought that the red ones were the best.