Tula, Mx (2)

Toltec Culture Page 2 of 3


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.