Tula, Mexico

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the Toltec capital, lie on a hill, separated from the present-day township of Tula de Allende by a river. The Toltecs not only presided over the development of the Early post-Classic period in Central Mexico but also, by some interaction which has still not been properly explained, influenced the Maya civilisation 1200km/750mi away in Yucatán.

History

The area around present-day Tula was initially inhabited by Otomí Indians who interbred with the Chichimecs - Náhuatl-speaking nomads who arrived from the north-west between the 7th and 9th c. It is quite likely that around the same time another tribal group, the Nonoalca (Náhuatl: "where the language changes") came to Tollán from Tabasco on the southern Gulf coast. According to the latest findings a cultural centre already existed in Tula Chico as early as ad 650.

The account which follows mixes myth with historical reality to such an extent that the traditional version of events can only have a limited validity. The leader of the Nonoalcos and founder of the Toltec dynasty, the legendary figure Mixcóatl ("cloud snake"), settled in the valley of Anáhuac. He married Chimalma ("reclining shield"), a princess from Tepoztlán, who in ad 947 gave birth to Ce Acatl-Topiltzín ("1 reed our prince"). After studying in the cultural centre of Xochicalco, which was dedicated to the god Quetzalcóatl, the young prince took over the leadership of the Toltecs and in ad 958 founded the new capital of Tollán ("place of the reed"). He encouraged the peace-loving members of the Quetzalcóatl cult to be teachers of the arts and sciences and also as a priest king took the name of this god.

About 20 years later he found himself in conflict with his mythical rival Tezcatlipoca ("smoking mirror"), the warlike god of the night and champion of evil spirits. Vanquished in this struggle, Topiltzín was forced to leave Tollán in 987 and went to Cholula where he is said to have stayed for a long time. He then went to Veracruz and from there to Yucatán, taking Toltec culture to the Mayas and bringing about a renaissance in their civilisation in his role as the god king Kukulcán. According to another version Quetzalcóatl is supposed to have left the country by boat, promising that he would return one day, and even to have been burned and transformed into the morning star.

It is thought that the Nonoalca-Toltecs returned to their original homeland of Tabasco in the second half of the 10th c., subsequently moving on to Chichén Itzá which they finally subdued. The result of this fusion of Toltec militarism with the artistic skill of the Mayas was the post-Classic renaissance of Maya art. With the victory of the warring faction in Tollán a militaristic empire developed which was based on the elite warrior orders of the eagles and the jaguars. It is also assumed that it was the Toltecs who instituted mass sacrifices of humans in order to appease the gods. In ad 1125 the decline of Tollán was apparently set in train by a struggle between the Chichimecs and the Nonoalcas, which led to the first emigration to Cholula and its conquest. The great fire of Tollán followed and then the arrival of other Chichimec groups who took part in the struggle for Cholula.

The end of the Toltec domination of Tollán finally occurred in 1175 under the rulers Topiltzín (Quetzalcóatl, a descendant of the legendary founder) and Huémac. Both of them fled southwards.

The majority of the inhabitants of Tollán settled elsewhere in the valley of Anáhuac or migrated to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico or to Chiapas, Guatemala and Nicaragua. The Pipil Indians who still live in these areas and speak a Náhuatl tongue are probably the survivors of this wave of emigration. The Aztecs who later

ruled over the region felt themselves to be the successors of the Toltecs and adopted aspects of their culture, in particular their religion.

The writings of the 16th c., above all those of Bernardino de Sahagún and Fernando de Alba Ixtlilxóchitl, are the first written reports of the mysterious city of Tollán, which however was not actually discovered for another four hundred years. Thus, right up to the end of the 1930s it was erroneously believed that Teotihuacán had been the Toltecs' capital. Admittedly Antonio García Cubas in 1873 and Désiré Charnay in 1880 had stumbled across remains of an archaeological site at Tula, but it was not until 1938 that Wigberto Jiménez Moreno discovered the old city.

Systematic excavations of the site were begun in the 1940s under Jorge R. Acosta and these finally led to its being identified beyond all doubt as the former Toltec metropolis. Further excavations under the direction of Eduardo Matos Moctezuma revealed that the central area of Tollán in its heyday extended to 12sq.km/5sq.mi and supported a population of some 60,000 people.