Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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THE ALPHABET
Toltecs
The term Toltec ("Skilled Worker') was used by the Aztecs to describe their predecessors, the "Master-Builders," who, however, called themselves Aculhaque ("Strong" or "Tall Men"). They were the supposed originators of Mexico's golden age. They were excellent architects, at their traditional capital Tollan, they built pyramids, temples, palaces and storeyed buildings. They were the first authenticated immigrants to the Valley of Mexico who spoke a dialect belonging to the Nahuan group, or Nalmatl-tolli, which was a polysynthetic or incorporatite speech; that is, the single words embody the conception of a whole sentence; for instance, the name of the famous last Azteca "emperor" Montezuma or Montecuzome (really, Montecuzomai thuicamina) means "when-the-chief-isangry-he-shoots-to-heaven."
Very little is known about the Toltec history. About the middle of the first millennium A.D., they seem to have entered Mexico, and about A.D. 770, they arrived at the site of their future capital. Their culture which reached its apogee about the end of the ninth century was probably mainly borrowed from the Mayas. Quetzalcoatl or Quetzalcohuatl, regarded by various authorities as "Airgod," "Sun-god," "Culture-hero," was the traditional originator of their culture, "the Father of the Toltecs."
At the end of the tenth century, the less civilized Chichimeca invaded the country. They, like their predecessors, spoke Nahuatl, but are considered by some experts as of Otomi origin. The Toltees disappeared from the historical horizon, but the prominence of the Chichimeca did not last long. There followed a period of warfare between the various tribes; for some time the Otomi or Hia-hiu an industrious non-Nahuatl-speaking race) had the pre-eminence. About the twelfth century the Aztecs settled in the country,
Aztecs
The Aztecs or Azteca (the "Crane People") received their name from the Teepances, by whom they were enslaved at the beginning of the fourteenth century, according to their own tradition, they started their migration (in 1168 ) from the mythical Island of Aztlan (Aztlan means only "Aztec-place"), situated in the north; they came indeed from the north. The Aztecs spoke a Nahuatl language. Aztec is now spoken by some 650,000 people in northern and central Mexico. In their manuscripts they are depicted as heroic fighters who made victorious marches through many places; as a matter of fact, they were a semibarbarous tribe who for about two centuries played no part at all or a very insignificant one, in Mexican history,
It was obviously for mere reasons of defence that they settled (in A.D.1325. according to the Mendoza codex) on the salt marshes on the west edge of the Lake Tezcuco or Texcoco, the original settlement consisting probably of rude pile-buildings standing in the water, and thus founded a kind of Venice, the town Tenochtitlan, which became the modern Mexico City. The glyph Tenochtitlan in Mexican manuscripts consists of a rock (letl), from which a cactus plant (nochtli) is growing, the termination clan indicates the place of."
Another century passed by, before the Aztecs became one of the most important peoples of the Anahuac ("Near-the-water"), that is, the Mexican plateau. About 1430 they founded, under their ruler Itacoati, a league with two neighbouring city-states, and they became the leading member of this Aztec confederacy. Under a series of warrior-rulers, the Aztecs were now embarked on a period of "imperialistic" expansion, which only the Spanish conquest stopped. In less than ninety years they succeeded in subduing some thirty city-states, but it would be
