Ancient civilizations-2

The question of the Toltec

The historical traditions also state that these migrations were responsible, along with a series of natural disasters, for the collapse of a great empire ruled by a people called the Toltec from their capital of Tollan, or Tula. Many dynasties of the conquest period, not only in central Mexico but even as far afield as highland Guatemala and the Yucatán Peninsula, claimed descent from the Toltec, apparently as a result of their dispersion after the fall of Tula.

The traditions describe the Toltec as the first civilizers, the first city builders, and the originators of craft skills and astrological knowledge. The major questions are: Did the Toltec really exist as a people? Where was Tula? Did these people actually play the extraordinary political and cultural role ascribed to them? To begin with, the annals themselves are in fundamental disagreement with respect to dates and the lists of Toltec kings. There are at least three major chronologies of the Toltec Empire (see below table). The dates by Ixtlilxóchitl, a learned mestizo of the post-conquest period, place the Toltec well within the Classic period of Meso-American archaeology, but the others correlate them with the early portion of the Postclassic. Most writers favour the later dates, but this would mean that the Toltec were not the first civilized peoples in central Mexico, as they claim.

Chronologies of the Toltec empire Ixtlilxóchitl Anales de Cuauhtitlán Codex Ramírez Chalchiuhtlanetzin 510–562 Huetzin 896–? Ixtlilcuechahauac 562–614 Totepeuh ?–887 Mixcoatl 900–947 Huetzin 614–666 Ihuitimal 887–923 Totepeuh 666–718 Topiltzin 923–947 980–999 Nacoxoc 718–770 Matlacxochitl 947–983 1000–34 Mitl-tlacomihua 770–829 Nauhyotzin 983–997 1034–49 Xihuiquenitzan 829–833 Matlaccoatzin 997–1025 1049–77 Iztaccaltzin 833–885 Tlilcoatzin 1025–46 1077–98 Topiltzin 885–959 Huemac 1047–1122 1098–1168

Adding further doubt to the veracity of the Toltec history is the admixture of myth and magic in the annals, not only at the beginning (which, like the histories of later dynasties, begins with a migration under a magician priest) but throughout the narrative. The ruler Topiltzin, for example, is also called Quetzalcóatl (the Nahua name for the Feathered Serpent god); he is opposed by Tezcatlipoca (also an Aztec god) and is driven out of Tula. He flees with his followers to the Gulf of Mexico and embarks on a raft of serpents. The story sounds like a duplicate of the cosmic myth or conflict between the two gods (see below Cosmogony and eschatology). Notably, the Maya in Yucatán had a tradition of a landing on the west coast made by foreigners, under a leader named Kukulcán (which is the Maya word for Feathered Serpent), who founded a city at Chichén Itzá and ruled over the Maya.

In spite of all the objections, the traditions of a great empire and of the city of Tula are so persistent that they must refer to some historical event and, indeed, have some archaeological support.