The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber

Another, more ebullient face of Teotihuacan’s civic identity is revealed in its mural art. Despite efforts to see them as sombre religious iconography, these playful pictorial scenes – painted on the interior walls of apartment compounds from around AD 350 – often seem veritably psychedelic.37 Streaming effigies emerge from clustered plant, human and animal bodies, framed by figures with elaborate costumes, sometimes grasping hallucinogenic seeds and mushrooms; and among the crowd scenes we find flower eaters with rainbows bursting from their heads.38 Such scenes often depict human figures all at roughly the same size, with no individual raised up over another.39 Of course, these murals represent Teotihuacanos as they liked to imagine themselves; social realities are always more complex.