The Toltecs.
Mexican history is greatly concerned with the Toltecs, the name meaning People of Tula, or Tollan, “place of the reeds.” Evidence is accumulating that this Tula was not the comparatively insignificant ruin on the northern edge of the Valley of Mexico, but instead was the great city of San Juan Teotihuacan. The lesser Tula may have been founded about 1200 A. D., just before the collapse of Toltec power.
Archæology tells a more detailed and convincing story of the Toltecs than does recorded history. In the stratified remains at Atzcapotzalco, the objects accredited to the Toltecs overlie those of the first potters of the Archaic Period and are in striking contrast to them. The principal motives of Toltec decorative art are obviously related to the earlier more brilliant work of the Mayas. The pyramids of the Toltecs exceed in size those of the Mayas but are of inferior construction, adobe bricks with concrete facing taking the place of rubble and cut stone. The temples that crowned these pyramids were also of less solid construction and no single example is now intact. Vaulted ceilings were replaced by flat timbered ceilings or high pitched roofs of thatch. Sometimes in wide rooms columns were used as additional support for roof beams. The groundplans of buildings other than temples show small rooms arranged in an irregular fashion round courts.
The ceremonial game of tlachtli resembling basket ball was an important feature of Toltec religion. It may have been obtained from the Olmeca, but at any rate spread far and wide under the Toltec régime. Another feature of Toltec religion was the worship of the sun’s disk which is reflected in various sculptures. Also this people are supposed to have invented pulque, made from the fermented sap of the agave. The reclining type of sculpture known as Chacmool, after the famous example found at Chichen Itza in northern Yucatan, may be a relic of a peculiar Toltec cult in which drunkenness figured. Human sacrifice was another feature of the religion of the Mexican highlands in contrast to that of the lowland Mayas. On the economic side Toltec culture rested on the earlier Archaic civilization, but on the artistic and ceremonial side it was largely inspired by the Mayas through the mediation of the Zapotecs, Olmecs, and Totonacs, but with new emphasis on certain aspects and several important innovations. The language of the Toltecs seems to have been essentially the same as that of the Aztecs who succeeded them.
The Toltecs made a radical departure in social policy in that they took to war and expropriation as a means of building up national wealth, thereby paralleling, somewhat ineffectively to be sure, the political methods of Europe and Western Asia. There had been war before their time in Central America, but not apparently for aggrandizement. The Mayas, and most other Mexican and Central American nations, developed excess food supply which released many persons for the pursuit of art and science. Perhaps it was pressure of population upon food supply in an arid land that directed the Toltecs towards tribute taking. At least the fact is reasonably clear that this people did embark upon a short-lived career of conquest and that they levied tribute of precious stones and precious metals and secured by the same means an augmented food supply.
There is confusion and reduplication in the lists of Toltec rulers and only three great names in succession can be regarded as certain. These are Huetzin, Ihuitimal, and Quetzalcoatl, although it seems probable that there was a still earlier chieftain named Mixcoatl or Mixcoamazatl and that two successors of Quetzalcoatl were Matlaxochitl and Nauyotl, the last-named also figuring as the first lord of Colhuacan. Then follow various dynastic lists for several Mexican tribes which flourished between the downfall of the Toltecs and the coming of the Spaniards.
Quetzalcoatl and the Toltec Era.
The chronology of the Toltecs and their successors is greatly dilated in several historical compilations made after the Spanish conquest by intelligent natives who interpreted fragments of ancient pictographic year counts then surviving in Mexico. Thanks to a modern survey of materials much more extensive than those which Chimalpahin, Ixtlilxochitl, etc., had at their disposal, we are now able to avoid the errors of these writers.
In the original pre-Spanish chronicles important events are recorded in connection with fifty-two year signs falling in regular order and then repeating. In the well-intentioned attempts to restore Mexican history entire cycles are interpolated in several places and the rulers are given lives of impossible length. In the case of Ixtlilxochitl we possess, fortunately, the principal documents which this descendant of the Texcocan kings attempted to interpret. Also in the case of the Annals of Quauhtitlan, an early compilation made by a nameless student of ancient history, we are in position to adjudicate wide errors in chronology. There is an annotation on this manuscript reading “6 times 4 centuries, plus 1 century, plus 13 years, today the 22nd of May 1558.” The “centuries” are the native cycles of fifty-two years and the total on this basis would amount to 1313 years. Subtracted from 1558 the beginning would be found in 245 A. D., while the years set down by the compiler in an unbroken series reach back to 635 A. D. But there is no pre-Spanish support for written history, outside the Mayan area, of anything like this antiquity.
The Toltec Era was established by Quetzalcoatl, after a simplified model of the Mayan calendar, on August 6, 1168 A. D., this date corresponding to a day 1 Tecpatl (1 Flint) in the first position of a month Toxcatl. This day gave its name to the entire year and its hieroglyph was one of a series of fifty-two used to designate years in the pictographic records. Most of the Mexican year counts begin with the particular sign 1 Tecpatl which corresponds to 1168-69 A. D. In others there is reference to a day 7 Acatl 1 Panquetzaliztli in a year 2 Acatl (February 16, 1195 A. D.) upon which a new fire ceremony, established by Quetzalcoatl in accordance with Mayan usage, was celebrated at intervals of fifty-two years.