Toltecs

Toltecs is the name given to a group of people who were considered by the aztecs and most of their contemporaries to have represented “the golden age” in Mesoamerican history. The name “Toltec” means “people of the place of reeds,” and Tollan (Tula), “the place of reeds,” figures in the origin myths of many Mesoamerican peoples from the Aztecs to the Maya. Descriptions of Tollan as a mountain surrounded by reedy swampland may well have been an evocation of the environment of mesoamerica’s first civilization, the olmecs, and their human-made mountains in the swampy lowlands on the southern borders of the Gulf of Mexico.

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Ruins of the Toltec city of Tula

(Corel)

Because of the widespread origin myths involving Tollan, there are actually many places in mexico that have used or incorporated the name (which was corrupted by the Spaniards to Tula). Archaeologically, the Toltecs have been identified specifically with the site of Tula, some seventy kilometers north of Mexico City. This site was first occupied during the eighth century a.d., as the ancient city of teotihuacán, which had dominated Mexico for the first millennium a.d., was declining. By a.d. 900, Tula was a major site, and in the following 300 years, it came to dominate central Mexico.

At its height during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, Tula covered thirteen square kilometers, and had a population of up to 60,000 people. The central part of the site had broad plazas punctuated with temple pyramids, ball courts, and colonnaded palaces. Toltecs who were farther down on the social scale lived in flat-roofed houses with sleeping rooms arranged around open patios where many of the daily activities would be undertaken. Family altars and shrines have been found in the patios of several houses, and the houses themselves were connected by passageways and alleys. There is evidence that much of the city was laid out in a rough grid. Workshops abounded in Tula, especially for work in obsidian and ceramics. Agriculture was carried out with the aid of irrigation (rainfall is low and undependable in the area), and the dozens of small farming hamlets that have been found within fifteen kilometers of the city must have provided much of Tula’s food supply. In the Mesoamerican tradition, additional food and other commodities would have flowed into the city as tribute from subject regions.