The "Time Capsule" project intiated by search engine Yahoo has headed to Mexico in search of the ideal launching pad from which to attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial lifeforms.

Teotihuacan, was once a cultural centre of one of the great Hispanic empires, will from Tuesday be used as an alien contact point for those involved with the project, Reuters reports.

Yahoo is taking written text messages, images and video contributions from people around the world who have something to say to any aliens in range and will be beamed up by the media company.

"We have this incredible ancient site and from that site we can project contemporary content," Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo's editor in chief, told Reuters.

"What is new is the ability to capture this information in such scale."

The word Teotihuacan translates to mean literally "place of those who have the road of the gods" in English and the city was thriving around the first century AD.