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98-649: The Toltec culture ( / ˈ t ɒ l t ɛ k / ) was a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture that ruled a state centered in Tula , Hidalgo , Mexico , during the Epiclassic and the early Post-Classic period of Mesoamerican chronology , reaching prominence from 950 to 1150 CE. The later Aztec culture considered the Toltec to be their intellectual and cultural predecessors and described Toltec culture emanating from Tōllān [ˈtoːlːãːn̥] ( Nahuatl for Tula) as

196-591: A Toltec Empire between the 10th and 12th century AD. The Aztecs referred to several Mexican city states as Tollan, "Place of Reeds", such as "Tollan Cholollan ". Archaeologist Laurette Séjourné , followed by the historian Enrique Florescano, have argued that the "original" Tollan was probably Teotihuacán . Florescano adds that the Mayan sources refer to Chichén Itzá when talking about the mythical place Zuyua (Tollan). Many historicists such as H. B. Nicholson (2001 (1957)) and Nigel Davies (1977) were fully aware that

294-665: A colony, or only loose connections between the two. Whether the Mixteca-Puebla art style has any meaning is also disputed. A contrary viewpoint is argued in a 2003 study by Michael E. Smith and Lisa Montiel, who compare the archaeological record related to Tula Hidalgo to those of the polities centered in Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan . They conclude that relative to the influence exerted in Mesoamerica by Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan, Tula's influence on other cultures

392-607: A different social structure. Until the accurate dating of Watson Brake and similar sites, the oldest mound complex was thought to be Poverty Point , also located in the Lower Mississippi Valley . Built about 1500 BCE, it is the centerpiece of a culture extending over 100 sites on both sides of the Mississippi . The Poverty Point site has earthworks in the form of six concentric half-circles, divided by radial aisles, together with some mounds. The entire complex

490-555: A group of sedentary Chichimeca from northern Mesoamerica. The former of these is believed to have composed the majority of the new culture and were influenced by the Mayan culture. During Teotihuacan's apogee in the Early Classic period, these people were tightly integrated into the political and economic systems of the state and formed large settlements in the Tula region, most notably Villagran and Chingu. Beginning around 650 CE,

588-638: A much later date, probably no more than 2,000 years ago, moving across the ice from Siberia into Alaska. The North American climate was unstable as the ice age receded during the Lithic stage . It finally stabilized about 10,000 years ago; climatic conditions were then very similar to today's. Within this time frame, roughly about the Archaic Period , numerous archaeological cultures have been identified. The unstable climate led to widespread migration, with early Paleo-Indians soon spreading throughout

686-702: A population of over 20,000. Other chiefdoms were constructed throughout the Southeast, and its trade networks reached to the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. At its peak, between the 12th and 13th centuries, Cahokia was the most populous city in North America. (Larger cities did exist in Mesoamerica and the Andes.) Monks Mound , the major ceremonial center of Cahokia, remains the largest earthen construction of

784-456: A similar end. To that point, imported goods at Tula Grande shows that the Toltecs indeed interacted commercially with sites throughout Mesoamerica; shared ceramic and ritual figurine styles between Tula and regions such as Socunusco supplement this idea. Additionally, surveys of Tula Grande have suggested the existence of an "extensive and highly specialized workshop-based obsidian industry," at

882-579: A single unified empire. The Mixtecs would eventually be conquered by the Aztecs until the Spanish conquest. The Mixtecs saw the Spanish conquest as an opportunity for liberation and established agreements with the conquistadors that allowed them to preserve their cultural traditions, though relatively few sections resisted Spanish rule. The Totonac civilization was concentrated in the present-day states of Veracruz and Puebla . The Totonacs were responsible for

980-565: A symbolically powerful building for the Toltec due to its reference in architecture to the historic and mythic homes of the people's ancestors. The physical layout of the broader plaza also partakes in referencing a shared past; its sunken colonnaded hall units are incredibly similar to those at cities of Tula's ancestral peoples. Importantly, these halls are known to have served as places to engage with both regional and long-distance trade networks and were possibly also used for diplomatic relations, suggesting that Tula Grande used these structures for

1078-463: A variety of tools, including distinctive projectile points and knives, as well as less distinctive butchering and hide-scraping implements. The vastness of the North American continent, and the variety of its climates, ecology , vegetation , fauna , and landforms, led ancient peoples to coalesce into many distinct linguistic and cultural groups. This is reflected in the oral histories of

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1176-631: Is Y-chromosome haplogroup Q1a3a . Researchers have found genetic evidence that the Q1a3a haplogroup has been in South America since at least 18,000 BCE. Y-chromosome DNA , like mtDNA , differs from other nuclear chromosomes in that the majority of the Y-chromosome is unique and does not recombine during meiosis . This has the effect that the historical pattern of mutations can easily be studied. The pattern indicates Indigenous peoples of

1274-418: Is a large mythological part of the narrative, some maintain that, by using a critical comparative method, some level of historicity can be salvaged from the sources. Others maintain that continued analysis of the narratives as sources of factual history is futile and hinders access to learning about the culture of Tula . Other controversies relating to the Toltec include the question of how best to understand

1372-411: Is nearly a mile across. Mound building was continued by succeeding cultures, who built numerous sites in the middle Mississippi and Ohio River valleys as well, adding effigy mounds , conical and ridge mounds, and other shapes. The Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures lasted from roughly 1000 BCE to 1000 CE. The term was coined in the 1930s and refers to prehistoric sites between

1470-593: Is the Olmec. This civilization established the cultural blueprint by which all succeeding indigenous civilizations would follow in Mexico. Pre-Olmec civilization began with the production of pottery in abundance, around 2300 BCE in the Grijalva River delta. Between 1600 and 1500 BCE, the Olmec civilization had begun, with the consolidation of power at their capital, a site today known as San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán near

1568-670: The Archaic period and the Mississippian cultures . The Adena culture and the ensuing Hopewell tradition during this period built monumental earthwork architecture and established continent-spanning trade and exchange networks. This period is considered a developmental stage without any massive changes in a short period but instead has a continuous development in stone and bone tools, leatherworking, textile manufacture, tool production, cultivation, and shelter construction. Some Woodland people continued to use spears and atlatls until

1666-614: The Aztec , the Kʼicheʼ and the Itza' Mayas. While the skeptical school of thought does not deny that cultural traits of a seemingly central Mexican origin have diffused into a larger area of Mesoamerica, it tends to ascribe this to the dominance of Teotihuacán in the Classic period and the general diffusion of cultural traits within the region. Recent scholarship, then, does not see Tula, Hidalgo as

1764-702: The Cliff Palace of Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado and the Great Houses in Chaco Canyon , New Mexico . The Puebloans also constructed a road system that stretched from Chaco Canyon to Kutz Canyon in the San Juan Basin . The Ancestral Puebloans are also known as "Anasazi", though the term is controversial, as the present-day Pueblo peoples consider the term to be derogatory, due to

1862-697: The Maya script . Other accounts also suggest that the Huastecs migrated as a result of the Classic Maya collapse around the year 900 CE. The Zapotecs were a civilization that thrived in the Oaxaca Valley from the late 6th century BCE until their downfall at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors. The city of Monte Albán was an important religious center for the Zapotecs and served as the capital of

1960-539: The Mesoamerican Postclassic period . The Nahuatl word for 'Toltec', for example, can mean 'master artisan' as well as 'inhabitant of Tula, Hidalgo', and the word Tollan (known as Tula in modern times) can refer specifically to Tula, Hidalgo, or more generally to all great cities through meaning 'place of the reeds'. Much of the questioning of these Aztec narratives is due to the lack of archaeological evidence to support them. Aztec accounts tell that

2058-664: The Olmec , Teotihuacan , Mayas , Zapotecs , Mixtecs , Huastecs , Purepecha , Toltecs , and Mexica / Aztecs . The Mexica civilization is also known as the Aztec Triple Alliance since they were three smaller kingdoms loosely united together. These Indigenous civilizations are credited with many inventions: building pyramid temples, mathematics , astronomy , medicine, writing, highly accurate calendars , fine arts , intensive agriculture, engineering , an abacus calculator, and complex theology . They also invented

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2156-461: The Spanish conquest of El Salvador , Cuzcatlan was forced to surrender to conquistador Pedro de Alvarado in 1528. Michael E. Smith (archaeologist) Michael Ernest Smith (born 1953) is an American archaeologist working primarily with Aztec and general Mesoamerican archaeology. He has written numerous scholarly articles about central Mexican archaeology as well as several books about

2254-463: The Tlingit , Haida , Chumash , Mandan , Hidatsa , and others, and some established large settlements, even cities, such as Cahokia , in what is now Illinois . Mesoamerica is the region extending from central Mexico south to the northwestern border of Costa Rica that gave rise to a group of stratified, culturally related agrarian civilizations spanning an approximately 3,000-year period before

2352-506: The founding population . The microsatellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicate that certain Amerindian populations have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region. The Na-Dené , Inuit , and Indigenous Alaskan populations exhibit haplogroup Q-M242 (Y-DNA) mutations, however, and are distinct from other Indigenous peoples with various mtDNA mutations. This suggests that

2450-454: The historicity of the Aztec mythical accounts based on the original approach of Brinton. This approach applies a different understanding of the word Toltec to the interpretation of the Aztec sources, interpreting it as largely a mythical and philosophical construct by either the Aztecs or Mesoamericans generally that served to symbolize the might and sophistication of several civilizations during

2548-463: The 20th century, represented in the works of scholars such as David Carrasco , Miguel León-Portilla , Nigel Davies and H. B. Nicholson , which all held the Toltecs to have been an actual ethnic group. This school of thought connected the "Toltecs" to the archaeological site of Tula , which was taken to be the Tollan of Aztec myth. This tradition assumes that much of central Mexico was dominated by

2646-569: The Americas experienced two very distinctive genetic episodes: first with the initial peopling of the Americas and second with European colonization of the Americas . The former is the determinant factor for the number of gene lineages and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous populations . Human settlement of the Americas occurred in stages from the Bering Sea coastline , with an initial 20,000-year layover on Beringia for

2744-604: The Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct tribes. The Paleo-Indians were hunter-gatherers , likely characterized by small, mobile bands consisting of approximately 20 to 50 members of an extended family. These groups moved from place to place as preferred resources were depleted and new supplies were sought. During much of the Paleo-Indian period, bands are thought to have subsisted primarily through hunting now-extinct giant land animals such as mastodon and ancient bison . Paleo-Indian groups carried

2842-513: The Aztec chronicles were a mixture of mythical and historical accounts; this led them to try to separate the two by applying a comparative approach to the varying Aztec narratives. For example, they seek to discern between the deity Quetzalcoatl and a Toltec ruler often referred to as Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl . Since the 1990s, the historicist position has fallen out of favor for a more critical and interpretive approach to

2940-453: The Aztecs' reverence of the Toltec might have been mostly propagandistic, intentionally overexaggerating the previous culture to use it as a steppingstone for their own. Scholars such as Michel Graulich (2002) and Susan D. Gillespie (1989) maintained that the difficulties in salvaging historic data from the Aztec accounts of Toltec history are too great to overcome. For example, there are two supposed Toltec rulers identified with Quetzalcoatl:

3038-477: The Europeans arrived, Indigenous peoples of North America had a wide range of lifeways from sedentary, agrarian societies to semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer societies. Many formed new tribes or confederations in response to European colonization. These are often classified by cultural regions , loosely based on geography. These can include the following: Numerous pre-Columbian societies were sedentary, such as

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3136-668: The Hohokam, they constructed kivas and great houses as well as ballcourts . Several of the Sinagua ruins include Montezuma Castle , Wupatki , and Tuzigoot . The Salado resided in the Tonto Basin in southeastern Arizona from 1150 CE to the 15th century. Archaeological evidence suggests that they traded with far-away cultures, as evidenced by the presence of seashells from the Gulf of California and macaw feathers from Mexico. Most of

3234-679: The Maya city of Chichen Itza . The Toltecs established vast trading relations with other Mesoamerican civilizations in Central America and the Puebloans in present-day New Mexico . During the Post-Classic era, the Toltecs suffered a subsequent collapse in the early 12th century, due to famine and civil war. The Toltec civilization was so influential to the point where many groups such as the Aztecs claimed to be descended from. With

3332-454: The Maya civilization cannot be overstated: it transformed political power, artistic depictions, and the nature of economics. Within the city of Teotihuacan was a diverse and cosmopolitan population. Most of the regional ethnicities of Mexico were represented in the city, such as Zapotecs from the Oaxaca region. They lived in apartment communities where they worked their trades and contributed to

3430-841: The Mississippian groups had vanished, and vast swaths of their territory were virtually uninhabited. The Ancestral Puebloans thrived in what is now the Four Corners region in the United States. It is commonly suggested that the culture of the Ancestral Puebloans emerged during the Early Basketmaker II Era during the 12th century BCE. The Ancestral Puebloans were a complex Oasisamerican society that constructed kivas , multi-story houses, and apartment blocks made from stone and adobe, such as

3528-559: The Mixtec-Puebla style of iconography, Tohil plumbate ceramic ware, and Silho or X-Fine Orange Ware ceramics. The presence of stylistic traits associated with Tula in Chichén Itzá is also taken as evidence for a Toltec horizon. The nature of interaction between Tula and Chichén Itzá has been especially controversial, with scholars arguing for either military conquest of Chichén Itzá by the Toltec, Chichén Itzá establishing Tula as

3626-483: The Olmec resulted in a power vacuum in Mexico. Emerging from that vacuum was Teotihuacan, first settled in 300 BCE. By 150 CE, Teotihuacan had risen to become the first true metropolis of what is now called North America. Teotihuacan established a new economic and political order never before seen in Mexico. Its influence stretched across Mexico into Central America, founding new dynasties in the Maya cities of Tikal , Copan , and Kaminaljuyú . Teotihuacan's influence over

3724-744: The Olmecs, Teotihuacan, the Toltecs, the Mexica, and the Mayas. These civilizations (except for the politically fragmented Maya) extended their reach across Mesoamerica—and beyond—like no others. They consolidated power and distributed influence in matters of trade, art, politics, technology, and theology. Other regional power players made economic and political alliances with these civilizations over 4,000 years. Many made war with them, but almost all peoples found themselves within one of their spheres of influence. Regional communications in ancient Mesoamerica have been

3822-459: The Spanish colonists. The Wichita people were a loose confederation that consisted of sedentary agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers who resided in the eastern Great Plains . They lived in permanent settlements and even established a city called Etzanoa , which had a population of 20,000 people. The city was eventually abandoned around the 18th century after it was encountered by Spanish conquistadors Jusepe Gutierrez and Juan de Oñate . When

3920-619: The Tlaxcalans for preserving their culture and for their assistance in defeating the Aztecs. The Tlaxcalans would once again assist to the Spaniards during the Mixtón War and the conquest of Guatemala . Cuzcatlan was a Pipil confederacy of kingdoms and city-states located in present-day El Salvador . According to legend, Cuzcatlan was established by Toltec migrants during the Classic Maya collapse in approximately 1200 CE. During

4018-486: The Toltec discovered medicine, designed the calendar system, created the Nahuatl language. More broadly, the Aztec traced most of their own societal achievements to the Toltec and their city Tollan, which was idolized as the epitome of state civilization with an enormous influence in the surrounding region. However, Tula—the site attributed with this Tollan—lacks much of the splendor that the Aztecs describe. For example, Tula

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4116-703: The Toltecs were disciples of the "High Priest Topiltzin." Topiltzin and his disciples were said to have preached and performed miracles. "Astonished, the people called these men Toltecs," which Duran says, "means Masters, or Men Wise in Some Craft." Duran speculated that this Topilzin may have been the Thomas the Apostle sent to preach the Christian Gospel among the "Indians", although he provides nothing more than circumstantial evidence of any contact between

4214-557: The calendar, were bequest from the former inhabitants of Tula, the Toltecs. The Mexica-Aztecs were the rulers of much of central Mexico by about 1400 (while Yaquis , Coras, and Apaches commanded sizable regions of northern desert), having subjugated most of the other regional states by the 1470s. At their peak, the Valley of Mexico where the Aztec Empire presided, saw a population growth that included nearly one million people during

4312-594: The capital of the Toltecs of the Aztec accounts. Rather, it takes Toltec to mean simply an inhabitant of Tula during its apogee. Separating the term Toltec from those of the Aztec accounts, it attempts to find archaeological clues to the ethnicity, history and social organization of the inhabitants of Tula. Pre-Columbian era During the pre-Columbian era, many civilizations developed permanent settlements, cities, agricultural practices, civic and monumental architecture, major earthworks , and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had declined by

4410-512: The city's economic and cultural prowess. Teotihuacan's economic pull impacted areas in northern Mexico as well. It was a city whose monumental architecture reflected a monumental new era in Mexican civilization, declining in political power about 650 CE—but lasting in cultural influence for the better part of a millennium, to around 950 CE. Contemporary to Teotihuacan's greatness was that of the Maya civilization. The period between 250 CE and 650 CE

4508-528: The civilizations in its area, the Tarascan Empire was the most prominent in metallurgy, harnessing copper, silver, and gold to create items such as tools, decorations, and even weapons and armor. Bronze was also used. The great victories over the Aztecs by the Tarascans cannot be understated. Nearly every war they fought in resulted in a Tarascan victory. Because the Tarascan Empire had little links to

4606-747: The cliff dwellings constructed by the Salado are primarily located in Tonto National Monument . The Iroquois League of Nations or "People of the Long House" was a politically advanced, democratic society, which is thought by some historians to have influenced the United States Constitution , with the Senate passing a resolution to this effect in 1988. Other historians have contested this interpretation and believe

4704-404: The coast in southeast Veracruz . The Olmec influence extended across Mexico, into Central America , and along the Gulf of Mexico . They transformed many peoples' thinking toward a new way of government, pyramid temples, writing, astronomy, art, mathematics, economics, and religion. Their achievements paved the way for the Maya civilization and the civilizations in central Mexico. The decline of

4802-494: The colonization of the Americas dates from between 40,000 and 13,000 years ago. The chronology of migration models is currently divided into two general approaches. The first is the short chronology theory with the first movement beyond Alaska into the Americas occurring no earlier than 14,000–17,000 years ago, followed by successive waves of immigrants. The second belief is the long chronology theory , which proposes that

4900-553: The de Soto expedition wandered the American Southeast for four years, becoming more bedraggled, losing more men and equipment, and eventually arriving in Mexico as a fraction of its original size. The local people fared much worse though, as the fatalities of diseases introduced by the expedition devastated the populations and produced much social disruption. By the time Europeans returned a hundred years later, nearly all of

4998-619: The decline of the Toltec civilization came political fragmentation in the Valley of Mexico . Into this new political game of contenders to the Toltec throne stepped outsiders: the Mexica . They were also a desert people, one of seven groups who formerly called themselves "Azteca", in memory of Aztlán , but they changed their name after years of migrating. Since they were not from the Valley of Mexico , they were initially seen as crude and unrefined in

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5096-423: The destruction, a few original documents have survived, and others were transcribed or translated into Spanish, providing modern historians with valuable insights into ancient cultures and knowledge. Before the development of archaeology in the 19th century, historians of the pre-Columbian period mainly interpreted the records of the European conquerors and the accounts of early European travelers and antiquaries. It

5194-471: The earliest migrants into the northern extremes of North America and Greenland derived from later populations. Asian nomadic Paleo-Indians are thought to have entered the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge (Beringia), now the Bering Strait , and possibly along the coast. Genetic evidence found in Indigenous peoples ' maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) supports the theory of multiple genetic populations migrating from Asia. After crossing

5292-430: The empire from 700 BCE to 700 CE. The Zapotecs resisted the expansion of the Aztecs until they were subjugated in 1502 under Aztec emperor Ahuitzotl . After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire , the Zapotecs resisted Spanish rule until King Cosijopii I surrendered in 1563. Like the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs thrived in the Oaxaca Valley. The Mixtecs consisted of separate independent kingdoms and city-states, rather than

5390-409: The end of the period when they were replaced by bows and arrows . The Mississippian culture was spread across the Southeast and Midwest of what is today the United States, from the Atlantic coast to the edge of the plains, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Upper Midwest, although most intensively in the area along the Mississippi River and Ohio River . One of the distinguishing features of this culture

5488-524: The epitome of civilization. In the Nahuatl language the word Tōltēkatl [toːɬˈteːkat͡ɬ] (singular) or Tōltēkah [toːɬˈteːkaḁ] (plural) came to take on the meaning " artisan ". The Aztec oral and pictographic tradition also described the history of the Toltec Empire , giving lists of rulers and their exploits. Modern scholars debate whether the Aztec narratives of Toltec history should be given credence as descriptions of actual historical events. While all scholars acknowledge that there

5586-408: The establishment of cities, such as El Tajín as important commercial trading centers. The Totonacs would later assist in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire as an opportunity to liberate themselves from Aztec military imperialism. The Toltec civilization was established in the 8th century CE. The Toltec Empire expanded its political borders to as far south as the Yucatán peninsula , including

5684-403: The first Cazonci, Tariacuri, united these communities and built them into one of the most advanced civilizations in Mesoamerica. Their capital at Tzintzuntzan was just one of the many cities—there were ninety more under its control. The Tarascan Empire was among the largest in Central America, so it is no surprise that they routinely came into conflict with the neighboring Aztec Empire . Out of all

5782-411: The first group of people entered the hemisphere at a much earlier date, possibly 50,000–40,000 years ago or earlier. Artifacts have been found in both North and South America which have been dated to 14,000 years ago, and accordingly humans have been proposed to have reached Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America by this time. In that case, the Inuit would have arrived separately and at

5880-427: The first ruler and founder of the Toltec dynasty and the last ruler, who saw the end of the Toltec glory and was forced into humiliation and exile. The first is described as a valiant triumphant warrior, but the last as a feeble and self-doubting old man. This caused Graulich and Gillespie to suggest that the general Aztec cyclical view of time, in which events repeated themselves at the end and beginning of cycles or eras

5978-400: The former Toltec Empire , they were also quite independent in culture from their neighbors. The Aztecs, Tlaxcaltec , Olmec, Mixtec, Maya, and others were very similar to each other, however. This is because they were all directly preceded by the Toltecs, and they therefore shared almost identical cultures. The Tarascans, however, possessed a unique religion, as well as other things. Tlaxcala

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6076-412: The hemispheres. The later debate about the nature of the Toltec culture goes back to the late 19th century. Mesoamericanist scholars such as Mariano Veytia, Manuel Orozco y Berra , Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg , and Francisco Clavigero all read the Aztec chronicles and believed them to be realistic historic descriptions of a pan-Mesoamerican empire based at Tula, Hidalgo. This historicist view

6174-543: The impact was minimal or did not exist, pointing to numerous differences between the two systems and the ample precedents for the constitution in European political thought. The Calusa were a complex paramountcy/kingdom that resided in southern Florida . Instead of agriculture, the Calusa economy relied on abundant fishing. According to Spanish sources, the "king's house" at Mound Key was large enough to house 2,000 people. The Calusa ultimately collapsed into extinction at around 1750 after succumbing to diseases introduced by

6272-484: The indigenous peoples, described by a wide range of traditional creation stories which often say that a given people have been living in a certain territory since the creation of the world. Throughout thousands of years, paleo-Indian people domesticated, bred, and cultivated many plant species, including crops that now constitute 50–60% of worldwide agriculture. In general, Arctic, Subarctic, and coastal peoples continued to live as hunters and gatherers, while agriculture

6370-687: The influence that astronomical activities had upon Mesoamerican people before the arrival of Europeans. Many of the later Mesoamerican civilizations carefully built their cities and ceremonial centers according to specific astronomical events. The biggest Mesoamerican cities, such as Teotihuacan , Tenochtitlan , and Cholula , were among the largest in the world. These cities grew as centers of commerce, ideas, ceremonies, and theology, and they radiated influence outwards onto neighboring cultures in central Mexico. While many city-states, kingdoms, and empires competed with one another for power and prestige, Mesoamerica can be said to have had five major civilizations:

6468-509: The land bridge, they moved southward along the Pacific coast and through an interior ice-free corridor. Throughout millennia, Paleo-Indians spread throughout the rest of North and South America. Exactly when the first people migrated into the Americas is the subject of much debate. One of the earliest identifiable cultures was the Clovis culture , with sites dating from some 13,000 years ago. However, older sites dating back to 20,000 years ago have been claimed. Some genetic studies estimate

6566-472: The late Aztec period (1350–1519). Their capital, Tenochtitlan , is the site of modern-day Mexico City . At its peak, it was one of the largest cities in the world with population estimates of 200,000–300,000. The market established there was the largest ever seen by the conquistadores on arrival. Initially, the lands that would someday comprise the lands of the powerful Tarascan Empire were inhabited by several independent communities. Around 1300, however,

6664-607: The late twentieth century, archeologists have studied, analyzed, and dated these sites, realizing that the earliest complexes were built by hunter-gatherer societies, whose people occupied the sites on a seasonal basis. Watson Brake , a large complex of eleven platform mounds, was constructed beginning in 3400 BCE and added to over 500 years. This has changed earlier assumptions that complex construction arose only after societies had adopted agriculture, and become sedentary, with stratified hierarchy and usually ceramics. These ancient people had organized to build complex mound projects under

6762-461: The leadership of Kukulcan. Following Charnay the term Toltec has since been associated with the influx of certain Central Mexican cultural traits into the Maya sphere of dominance that took place in the late Classic and early Postclassic periods; the Postclassic Mayan civilizations of Chichén Itzá , Mayapán and the Guatemalan highlands have been referred to as "Toltecized" or "Mexicanized" Mayas. The historicist school of thought persisted well into

6860-399: The majority of these settlements were abandoned as a result of Teotihuacan's decline. The Coyotlatelco rose as the dominant culture in the region. It is with the Coyotlatelco that Tula, as it relates to the Toltec, was founded along with a number of hilltop communities. Tula Chico, as the settlement is referred to during this phase, grew into a small regional state out of the consolidation of

6958-402: The most prominent examples of the Toltec material culture at the site include pyramids, ball-courts, and the Atlantean warrior sculptures on top of Pyramid B. Various civic buildings surrounding a central plaza are especially distinctive, as excavations show the use of columns inside these buildings and in surrounding colonnades. One of these buildings, known as Building 3, is argued to have been

7056-423: The myth of the struggle between Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca . Désiré Charnay , the first archaeologist to work at Tula, Hidalgo, defended the historicist views based on his impression of the Toltec capital, and was the first to note similarities in architectural styles between Tula and Chichén Itza . This led him to posit the theory that Chichén Itzá had been violently taken over by a Toltec military force under

7154-478: The only possibly historical data in the Aztec chronicles are the names of some rulers and possibly some of the conquests ascribed to them. Furthermore, among the Nahuan peoples the word Tolteca was synonymous with artist, artisan or wise man, and Toltecayotl , literally 'Toltecness', meant art, culture, civilization, and urbanism and was seen as the opposite of Chichimecayotl ('Chichimecness'), which symbolized

7252-516: The only true writing system native to the Americas using pictographs and syllabic elements in the form of texts and codices inscribed on stone, pottery, wood, or perishable books made from bark paper. The Huastecs were a Maya ethnic group that migrated northwards to the Gulf Coast of Mexico. The Huastecs are considered to be distinct from the Maya civilization, as they separated from the main Maya branch at around 2000 BCE and did not possess

7350-657: The people abandoned their settlements, likely due to drought. The Mogollon resided in the present-day states of Arizona , New Mexico, and Texas as well as Sonora and Chihuahua . Like most other cultures in Oasisamerica, the Mogollon constructed sophisticated kivas and cliff dwellings. In the village of Paquimé , the Mogollon are revealed to have housed pens for scarlet macaws , which were introduced from Mesoamerica through trade. The Sinagua were hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists who lived in central Arizona. Like

7448-416: The prehistoric Americas . The culture reached its peak in about 1200–1400 CE, and in most places, it seems to have been in decline before the arrival of Europeans. Many Mississippian peoples were encountered by the expedition of Hernando de Soto in the 1540s, mostly with disastrous results for both sides. Unlike the Spanish expeditions in Mesoamerica, which conquered vast empires with relatively few men,

7546-480: The reasons behind the perceived similarities in architecture and iconography between the archaeological site of Tula and the Maya site of Chichén Itzá . Researchers are yet to reach a consensus in regards to the degree or direction of influence between these two sites. While the exact origins of the culture are unclear, it likely developed from a mixture of the Nonoalca people from the southern Gulf Coast and

7644-484: The region, Chichén Itzá, as the vast majority of obsidian at both sites comes from the same two geological sources. One of the earliest historical mentions of Toltecs was in the 16th century by the Dominican friar Diego Durán , who was best known for being one of the first westerners to study the history of Mesoamerica. Durán's work remains relevant to Mesoamerican societies, and based on his findings Durán claims that

7742-481: The savage, nomadic state of peoples who had not yet become urbanized. This interpretation argues that any large urban center in Mesoamerica could be referred to as Tollan and its inhabitants as Toltecs – and that it was a common practice among ruling lineages in Postclassic Mesoamerica to strengthen claims to power by asserting Toltec ancestry. Mesoamerican migration accounts often state that Tollan

7840-428: The site that could have been one of the sources of the city's economic and political power, taking on Teotihuacan's previous role as the region's distributor. A survey done by Healan et al. recovered roughly 16,000 pieces of obsidian from the site's urban zone and over 25,000 from its surrounding residential areas. Tula's involvement in obsidian trade is also evidence for the city's interaction with another powerful city in

7938-666: The site was burned and abandoned at the end of the Epiclassic period, Tula Grande was soon constructed bearing strong similarities 1.5 kilometers to the south. It is during the Early Postclassic period that Tula Grande and its associated Toltec culture would become the dominant force in the broader region. Some archaeologists, such as Richard Diehl , argue for the existence of a Toltec archaeological horizon characterized by certain stylistic traits associated with Tula, Hidalgo and extending to other cultures and polities in Mesoamerica. Traits associated with this horizon are include

8036-619: The subject of considerable research. There is evidence of trade routes starting as far north as the Mexico Central Plateau , and going down to the Pacific coast. These trade routes and cultural contacts then went on as far as Central America . These networks operated with various interruptions from pre-Olmec times and up to the Late Classical Period (600–900 CE). The earliest known civilization in Mesoamerica

8134-410: The surrounding Coyotlatelco sites. The settlement was roughly three to six square kilometers in size with a gridded urban plan and a relatively large population. The complexity of the main plaza was especially distinct from other Coyotlatelco sites in the area, as it had multiple ball courts and pyramids . The Toltec culture, as it is understood during its peak, can be tied directly to Tula Chico; after

8232-599: The time of the establishment of the first permanent European colonies, around the late 16th to early 17th centuries, and are known primarily through archaeological research of the Americas and oral histories. Other civilizations, contemporaneous with the colonial period, were documented in European accounts of the time. For instance, the Maya civilization maintained written records, which were often destroyed by Christian Europeans such as Diego de Landa , who viewed them as pagan but sought to preserve native histories. Despite

8330-555: The visits to the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus. Mesoamerican is the adjective generally used to refer to that group of pre-Columbian cultures. This refers to an environmental area occupied by an assortment of ancient cultures that shared religious beliefs, art, architecture, and technology in the Americas for more than three thousand years. Between 2000 and 300 BCE, complex cultures began to form in Mesoamerica. Some matured into advanced pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations such as

8428-500: The ways of the Nahua civilization. Through political maneuvers and ferocious martial skills, they managed to rule Mexico as the head of the 'Triple Alliance' which included two other Aztec cities, Tetxcoco and Tlacopan . Latecomers to Mexico's central plateau , the Mexica thought of themselves, nevertheless, as heirs of the civilizations that had preceded them. For them, arts, sculpture, architecture, engraving, feather-mosaic work, and

8526-420: The wheel, but it was used solely as a toy. In addition, they used native copper , silver , and gold for metalworking. Archaic inscriptions on rocks and rock walls all over northern Mexico (especially in the state of Nuevo León ) demonstrate an early propensity for counting. Their number system was base 20 and included zero . These early count markings were associated with astronomical events and underscore

8624-667: The word tracing its origins to a Navajo word meaning "ancestor enemies". The Hohokam thrived in the Sonoran desert in what is now the U.S. state of Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora . The Hohokam were responsible for the construction of a series of irrigation canals that led to the successful establishment of Phoenix, Arizona via the Salt River Project . The Hohokam also established complex settlements such as Snaketown , which served as an important commercial trading center. After 1375 CE, Hohokam society collapsed and

8722-493: Was a Nahua republic and confederation in central Mexico. The Tlaxcalans fiercely resisted Aztec expansion during the Flower Wars ever since the Aztecs expelled them from Lake Texcoco . The Tlaxcalans would later ally with the Spanish conquistadors under Hernán Cortés as an opportunity to liberate them from the Aztecs and managed to successfully conquer the Aztecs with the help of the conquistadors. The Spaniards would reward

8820-416: Was a time of intense flourishing of Maya civilized accomplishments. While the many Maya city-states never achieved political unity on the order of the central Mexican civilizations, they exerted tremendous intellectual influence upon Mexico and Central America. The Maya built some of the most elaborate cities on the continent and made innovations in mathematics, astronomy, and calendrics. The Maya also developed

8918-583: Was adopted in more temperate and sheltered regions, permitting a dramatic rise in population. After the migration or migrations, it was several thousand years before the first complex societies arose, the earliest emerging about seven to eight thousand years ago. As early as 5500 BCE, people in the Lower Mississippi Valley at Monte Sano and other sites in present-day Louisiana , Mississippi , and Florida were building complex earthwork mounds , probably for religious purposes. Beginning in

9016-473: Was being inscribed into the historical record by the Aztecs, making it futile to attempt to distinguish between a historical Topiltzin Ce Acatl and a Quetzalcoatl deity. Graulich argued that the Toltec era is best considered the fourth of the five Aztec mythical "Suns" or ages, the one immediately preceding the fifth Sun of the Aztec people, presided over by Quetzalcoatl. This caused Graulich to consider that

9114-461: Was first challenged by Daniel Garrison Brinton who argued that the "Toltecs" as described in the Aztec sources were merely one of several Nahuatl-speaking city-states in the Postclassic period, and not a particularly influential one at that. He attributed the Aztec view of the Toltecs to the "tendency of the human mind to glorify the good old days" and the confounding of the place of Tollan with

9212-442: Was mainly built out of the relatively soft and unimpressive adobe brick, and while Tula certainly was a major regional city in its time, it was minuscule both in population and in influence in comparison to both its predecessor, Teotihuacan, and its Aztec descendant, Tenochtitlan. Additional material remains at Tula, such as the destruction of Toltec buildings and monumental art coinciding with the arrival of Aztec ceramics, suggest that

9310-528: Was negligible and was probably not deserving of being defined as an empire , but more of a kingdom. While Tula does have the urban complexity expected of an imperial capital, its influence and dominance were not very far reaching. Evidence for Tula's participation in extensive trade networks has been uncovered; for example, the remains of a large obsidian workshop. At its height, Tula Grande had an estimated population of as many as 60,000 and covered 16 square kilometers of hills, plains, valleys, and marsh. Some of

9408-569: Was not until the nineteenth century that the work of people such as John Lloyd Stephens , Eduard Seler , and Alfred Maudslay , and institutions such as the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University , led to the reconsideration and criticism of the early European sources. Now, the scholarly study of pre-Columbian cultures is most often based on scientific and multidisciplinary methodologies. The haplogroup most commonly associated with Indigenous Amerindian genetics

9506-493: Was ruled by Quetzalcoatl (or Kukulkan in Yucatec and Q'uq'umatz in Kʼicheʼ ), a godlike mythical figure who was later sent into exile from Tollan and went on to found a new city elsewhere in Mesoamerica. According to Patricia Anawalt, a professor of anthropology at UCLA , assertions of Toltec ancestry and claims that their elite ruling dynasties were founded by Quetzalcoatl have been made by such diverse civilizations as

9604-538: Was the construction of complexes of large earthen mounds and grand plazas, continuing the mound-building traditions of earlier cultures. They grew maize and other crops intensively, participated in an extensive trade network, and had a complex stratified society. The Mississippians first appeared around 1000 CE, following and developing out of the less agriculturally intensive and less centralized Woodland period. The largest urban site of these people, Cahokia —located near modern East St. Louis, Illinois —may have reached

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