Direction for [ Question No: 42 To 45 ] :
Read the following excerpt and answer the questions asked at the end. The answers to the questions should be based on the excerpt.
The city of Teotihuacán, which lay about 50 kilometers north-east of modern-day Mexico City, began its growth by 200 - 100 B.C. At its height, between about A.D. 150 and 700, it probably had a population of more than 1,25,000 people and covered at least 20 square kilometers. It had over 2,000 apartment complexes, a great market, a large number of industrial workshops, an administrative center, a number of massive religious edifices, and a regular grid pattern of streets and buildings. Clearly, much planning and central control were involved in the expansion and ordering of this great metropolis. Moreover, the city had economic and perhaps religious contacts with most parts of Mesoamerica (Modern Central America and Mexico). The main factors for development were its geographic location on a natural trade route to the south and east of the Valley of Mexico, the obsidian resources in the Teotihuacán Valley itself and the valley's potential for extensive irrigation. The exact role of other factors is much more difficult to pinpoint - for instance, Teotihuacán's religious significance as a shrine, the historical situation in and around the Valley of Mexico toward the end of the first millennium B.C., the ingenuity and foresightedness of Teotihuacán's elite and finally, the impact of natural disasters, such as the volcanic eruptions of the late first millennium B.C. This last factor is at least circumstantially implicated in Teotihuacán's rise. Prior to 200 B.C., a number of relatively small centers coexisted in and near the Valley of Mexico. Around this time, the largest of these centers, Cuicuilco, was seriously affected by a volcanic eruption, with much of its agricultural land covered by lava. With Cuicuilco eliminated as a potential rival, any one of a number of relatively modest towns might have emerged as a leading economic and political power in Central Mexico. The archaeological evidence clearly indicates, though, that Teotihuacán was the center that did arise as the predominant force in the area by the first century A.D.
