Toltec Culture

Tula was the capital city of the Toltec Indian Empire. The ruins can still be found forty miles northwest of present day Mexico City which is located on the northern edge of Mesoamerica. It is situated in the Mexican state of Hidalgo and is placed near the modern town of Tula de Allende. The area is in the Valley of Aahuac or what is now called the Valley of Mexico. It is one of the most arid regions where little can be grown, with the exception of maguey, an intrinsic supplier of needles, sap and other products used by the Toltecs. In addition, the city is located on a natural promontory with steep slopes surrounding the city on three sides.

The city rose to power after the collapse of Teotihuacan to take control of the basin of Mexico at approximately 968 AD. Even though the city attempted to fill the political shoes of Teotihuacan, the evidence shows that the city was much smaller. The city is laid out on a grid pattern with a ceremonial core and surrounded by pyramids. The city was organized into households which are approximately 1,970 feet (600 meters) square. Inside of these formal households were square or rectangular flat-roofed houses which were grouped into as many as five dwellings which all shared a shrine. The city ruins are characterized by giant stone warriors placed at the temples by the Toltecs.

It's maximum size and power was achieved between 950 and 1150 AD and its largest population was between 40,000 and 60,000 people. Its largest geographic size was between 13 and 16 square kilometers. There is much archeological evidence that shows that Tula had lost much of its power and was at least partially abandoned by the year 1200 AD. Many experts think this phenomenon occurred due to a drought and famine which ravaged the city. With the collapse of the city, the temples and pyramids of Tula were razed by other Indian tribes.

The Toltecs ruled much of Maya central Mexico from the tenth to twelfth centuries A.D. The Toltecs were the last dominant Mesoamerican culture before the Aztecs,and inherited much from Maya civilization. The Toltec capital was at Tula, 80 kilometres north of Mexico City. The most impressive Toltec ruins, however, are at Chichen Itza in Yucatan, where a branch of Toltec culture survived beyond the civilization's fall in central Mexico. The Toltecs were Nahuatl-speaking people who held sway over what is now central Mexico from the 10th to the 12th century AD. Their name has many meanings: an "urbanite, " a "cultured" person, and, literally, the "reed people," derived from their urban centre, Tollan ("Place of the Reeds"), near the modern town of Tula, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Mexico City. About AD 900 they sacked and burned the great city of Teotihuacan under the leadership, according to tradition, of Mixcoatl ("Cloud Serpent"). Under his son, Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, they formed a number of small states of various ethnic origins into an empire later in the 10th century.

Author: Michelle McCann