 When Spanish invaders eventually settled down in Mexico, they reached Cholula and built a symbol of their conquest there known as Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Ramidosa. The Spanish built this atop of what they thought was a large hill with the best vantage point. They hadn't realized that the hill on which they built this church atop was in fact the Olmali Cholula Pyramid. How this never dawned on the Spanish is just astonishing. Standing 450 meters wide and 66 meters tall from end to end, the Great Pyramid of Cholula is equivalent to nine Olympic-sized swimming pools. For an obscure temple no one's heard of, Cholula holds an impressive array of records. It's the largest pyramid on the planet with a base four times larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza and nearly twice the volume. Never mind the largest pyramid, it's the largest monument ever constructed anywhere by any civilization to this day. To locals it's aptly known as Tila Chilopetit, man-made mountain. Thanks to the church on top, it's also the oldest continuously occupied building on the continent. The story goes that until the locals began construction of an insane asylum in 1910, nobody knew it was a pyramid. Despite its enormous size, very little is known about the pyramid's early history. Its thought construction began around 300 BC by who exactly remains a mystery. According to myth it was built by a giant. Most likely the city's inhabitants known as the Chuloteka were a cosmopolitan mix. The pyramid is described as the Russian doll of a construction, consisting of no less than six pyramids, one atop the other and it just so happens that it's conveniently located in the Mexican highlands and was an important trading post for thousands of years, linking the Chuloteka Chichimeca Kingdom in the north with the Mayan in the south. The huge construction is still covered with soil and vegetation today and nobody really knows why it fell so far out of favor with people and even with the memories of people. But it can be hypothesized that this was due to an ancient cataclysmic event that affected the entire planet's cultures, causing floods, earthquakes and scenes of utter devastation across the globe. To understand what was going on in ancient times, why pyramids? Why everywhere? A new study of pyramids and their relationship with volcanoes has been proposed by our friend in academia, Stingen Vandenhoven and we will of course link his paper below so please check that out after the video. With this idea Mr. Vandenhoven tries to understand why a whole world started building similar structures, ignoring the obvious most given answers and looking for a possible deeper meaning behind this worldwide phenomena. It starts with a first clue, Pira Mid, which translates as fire in the middle. Ben Ben was symbolic for primeval mound. The author struck on the idea while looking at a photo of the Chulula pyramid in Mexico known as the largest Mesoamerican pyramid with the volcano in the backdrop. This sparked a quest to find out if that might have been of significance and it has proven to be so. Even though earlier researchers have suspected the pyramid to be related to the primordial mountain, as far as the author knows, no specific correlations have been put in paper in relation to volcanoes. According to Steven Meller, the word pyramid is derived from the Greek words Pyramus and Pyramidus. The meaning of the word Pyramus is obscure and may relate to the shape of a pyramid. The word Pyramidus has been translated as fire in the middle. In alignment with the indigenous tradition, we use the interpretation house of nature, house of energy, per netter. We know the ancients revered the primordial mountain as per Egyptian religion. The mountain reoccurs in many religions worldwide, often depicted with the pole star on top or a bird on top like the Ben Ben bird or the winged sun disk seen on top of a tree. According to the Thunderbolts project, it was given different names in different cultures. The Egyptians knew it as the primordial mound, the Israelites as Sinai and Zion, and the Greeks as Olympus and Parnassus. Further afield the Indians call the divine peak Meru or Su Meru. Mr. Vandenhoeven states that there is one very important link researchers and academics worldwide might have missed, which is the relation to the volcano. The pyramid, temples, temple mounds and platforms that are linked and aligned to volcanoes across the globe. Why volcanoes? Well, this is the primordial mount, the joining of alchemyl fire and water to create new land or a possible destruction and deluge by volcanoes. Could it be that the deluge or destruction is commemorated with pyramids as centiphas and monuments such as a possible deluge or destruction of homeland or did the ancients see the phenomenon of death and destruction as the most powerful of nature's forces? Not only is the pyramid a representation of that primordial mount that rises from the sea water and fire combined, it is also directly related to some of the world's largest pyramids so obvious in plain sight as a background to the building but not explicitly mentioned as related to it by any researcher. Not in relation to this subject in Mesoamerica and also not in a global relation in different countries worldwide like Bali, that was the volcano that caused the temple or pyramid to be built. Some pyramids and temples are directly positioned on or near such volcanoes making it a small copy of the large mountain behind it as seen in Mexico and Bali an ocean apart with no cultural links whatsoever according to conventional academic research. It definitely cannot be brushed aside and merely sneered to as just a coincidence. The Aztecs gave the name Mikokoti Street of the Dead or Calzada de los Muertes in Spanish to the broad street-like series of connected plazas in Teotihuacan. It points directly at the nearby sacred peak of Sierra Gordo, not any mountain, again a volcano. The street of the dead was once erroneously thought to have been lined with tombs but the low buildings that flank it probably were palace residents and the author of this particular research does not believe the pyramids are the pyramids of the sun and moon. He suspects they represent the two large volcanoes southwest of Mexico City and that the reason that the street of the dead connects to one pyramid is exactly that because the volcanoes potentially could have caused massive death to a pre-civilization. The old Toltec city of Tula was on the other side of Mexico City much closer to the volcanoes and that the newer cities are deliberately further on the other side. Could Teotihuacan and Chalula be cities that came from Tula that was abandoned and destroyed by volcanic eruptions during a cataclysm? Could it be asserted that the true meaning of the pyramid shape is the volcanic mountain? Could that be the reason why they mimicked the two mountains as pyramids in Teotihuacan and linked the street of the dead directly to one pyramid? That thesis would require more proof to be validated and hold any academic grounds and we're going to go into Mr. Vanden Hoven's theory in part two on the subject. What's the thinking on the matter? Comments below and as always guys, thank you for watching.