Reopening Ancient Trade Routes

The BBC reports, via Drudge, that Walmart has opened a new store a half mile from the Teotihuacan pyramids of Mexico

Around 200 shoppers queued for hours to be the first to enter the store, which is half a mile from the ancient Mexican pyramids at Teotihuacan.

"People need the well-being of their families more than culture," said one.

Good picture of Teotihuacan here

The store is 71902 sq. feet and adds to Walmart's 600+ stores in Mexico. Walmart is the biggest private employer in Mexico. It is part of a format used by Walmart in Mexico called "Bodega Aurrera", similar to the Sam's Clubs stores.. The new store has raised conservationist hackles, and had to be approved by the UN. A small pre-Hispanic altar was found recently at the parking lot, and was preserved in situ. Next to the Wal-Mart site stands the rust-colored Hotel Quinta Sol, a project she and others failed to block. A huge yellow sign for the Elektra electronics store chain and a broken Coca-Cola billboard dot the landscape.

Teotihuacan and Wal-Mart, centuries and cultures apart, share one thing in common: Both blossomed from trade.

Teotihuacan, which flourished between 250 and 600 A.D., controlled an intricate network of commercial routes that stretched north, west and south, reaching a thousand miles to the Classic Maya civilization of southeastern Mexico and Guatemala.

Tens of thousands were employed there in crafts. Some estimates say there were 100,000 traders. Among goods exchanged were valuable gray and green obsidian used in knives, instruments, mirrors and jewelry, and bartered for faraway sea salt, shells, Quetzal feathers, jade and chocolate.

Colin Wilson's "The Atlantis Blueprint" is a particularly well-researched and interesting synthesis of current researchm linking the Egyptian, Chinese and South American pyramids and other sacred sites, based on the crust-displacement theory of Charles Hapgood, among others.