Learn about the Toltec Empire: an empire whose influence was felt in all parts of central and eastern Mexico. Appearing in central Mexico during the 10th century A.D., and reaching nearly 40,000 inhabitants, the Toltecs established their central city of Tula, dominating the center of Mexico for nearly 300 years until the arrival of the Aztecs. The ceremonial center of Tula included a pyramid where religious rituals were practiced in honor of two deities:
 Quetzalcoatl, symbolizing learning, culture, philosophy, fertility, holiness and gentility; and his rival Tezcatlipoca, known for his warlike nature and tyranny. Both deities remain important figures in indigenous culture today.
Located only 40 miles from Mexico City, the city of Tula, with its 15-foot high warrior statutes, offers an opportunity to enjoy the remains of the Toltec Empire.
Toltec in Mesoamerican studies has been used in different ways by different scholars to refer to actual populations and polities of pre-Columbian central Mexico or to the mythical ancestors mentioned in the mythical/historical narratives of the Aztecs. It is an ongoing debate whether the Toltecs can be understood to have formed an actual ethnic group at any point in Mesoamerican history or if they are mostly or only a product of Aztec myth.
The scholars who have understood the Toltecs to have been an actual ethnic group often connect them to the archeological site of Tula, which is then supposed as the Tollan of Aztec myth. This tradition assumes the "Toltec empire" to have dominated much of central Mexico between the 10th and 12th century AD.
Other Mexican cities such as Teotihuacán have also been proposed to have been the historical Tollan "Place of Reeds", the city from which the name Tolteca "inhabitant of Tollan" is derived in the Nahuatl language. The term Toltec has also been associated with the arrival of certain Central Mexican cultural traits into the Mayan sphere of dominance that took place in the late classic and early postclassic periods, and the Postclassic Mayan civilizations of Chichén Itzá, Mayapán and the Guatemalan highlands have been referred to as "toltecized" or "mexicanized" Mayas. For example the striking similarities between the city of Tula, Hidalgo and Chichén Itzá have often been cited as direct evidence for Toltec dominance of the Postclassic Maya. |
