The question as to whether copper really was first used in Egypt is not yet resolved, and many arguments can be brought against the theory of Egyptian origin and in favour of one in Syria or further north.26 Egypt has also recently been credited with being the inceptor of the whole " megalithic (or heliolithic, as the fashionable word now is) culture " of mankind, from Britain to China and (literally) Peru or at any rate Mexico via the Pacific Isles.27 The theory is that the achievements of the Egyptians in great stone architecture at the time of the pyramid-builders so impressed their contemporaries that they were imitated in the surrounding lands, by the Libyans and Syrians, that the fame of them was carried by the Phoenicians further afield, and that early Arab and Indian traders passed on the megalithic idea to Farther India, and thence to Polynesia and so on so that both the teocalli of Teotihuacan and Stonehenge are ultimately derived through cromlechs and dolmens innumerable from the stone pyramid of Saqqara, built by Imhotep, the architect of King Zoser, about 3100 B.C. (afterwards deified as the patron of science and architecture).
The great cathedral stands on or near the site of the Aztec temple (teocalli) destroyed by Cortes in 1521.
The national museum, which occupies the east side of the national palace, is rich in Mexican antiquities, among which are the famous " calendar stone," supposed to be of Toltec origin, and the " sacrificial stone " found in the ruins of the great teocalli destroyed by Cortes.
About the middle of the 15th century their mud-and-rush dwellings were partly replaced by stone structures, grouped around the central enclosure of the great teocalli, and bordering the causeways leading to the mainland.
The temples were called teocalli or " god's house," and rivalled in size as they resembled in form the temples of ancient Babylon.