Editing Toltec (section)

=== Toltecs as myth ===
[[File:Tula birdman.jpg|thumb|Depiction of an anthropomorphic bird-snake deity, probably Quetzalcoatl at the Temple of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli at Tula, Hidalgo]]
[[File:PalacioQuemado left-Tollan-Xicocotitlan-Hidalgo Mexico.JPG|thumb|View of the columns of the burned palace at Tula Hidalgo. The second [[Mesoamerican ballgame|ballcourt]] is in the background.]]
[[File:Telamones Tula.jpg|thumb|Toltec warriors represented by the famous [[Atlantean figures (Mesoamerica)|Atlantean figures]] in Tula.]]
[[File:Eagle Relief MET DT4850.jpg|thumb|Toltec carving representing the Aztec eagle, found in [[Veracruz (city)|Veracruz]], 10th–13th century. [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]].<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/307599 |title=Eagle Relief, Toltec |website=[[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] website }}</ref>]]

Since the 1990s, the historicist position has fallen out of favor for a more critical and interpretive approach to 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 the [[Mesoamerican chronology|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'.{{sfnp|Iverson|2017}}

Much of the questioning of these Aztec narratives is due to the lack of archaeological evidence to support them. Aztec accounts tell that 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 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.{{sfnp|Iverson|2017}} Additional material remains at Tula, such as the destruction of Toltec buildings and monumental art coinciding with the arrival of Aztec ceramics, suggest that 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.{{sfnp|Iverson|2017}}

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: 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.{{sfnp|Gillespie|1989|p={{page needed|date=July 2021}}}} This caused Graulich and Gillespie to suggest that the general Aztec cyclical view of time,{{citation needed|date=July 2021}} in which events repeated themselves at the end and beginning of cycles or eras was being inscribed into the historical record by the Aztecs, making it futile to attempt to distinguish between a historical [[Ce Acatl Topiltzin|Topiltzin Ce Acatl]] and a [[Quetzalcoatl]] deity.{{sfnp|Graulich|2002|p={{page needed|date=July 2021}}}} 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 the only possibly historical data in the Aztec chronicles are the names of some rulers and possibly some of the conquests ascribed to them.{{sfnp|Graulich|2002|p={{page needed|date=July 2021}}}}

Furthermore, among the [[Nahua peoples|Nahua]]n peoples the word ''Tolteca'' was synonymous with artist, artisan or wise man, and ''Toltecayotl'',{{sfnp|Healan|1989|p={{page needed|date=July 2021}}}} literally 'Toltecness', meant art, culture, civilization, and urbanism and was seen as the opposite of ''[[Chichimeca]]yotl'' ('Chichimecness'), which symbolized the savage, nomadic state of peoples who had not yet become urbanized.{{sfnp|Morritt|2011|p={{page needed|date=July 2021}}}} 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 was ruled by [[Quetzalcoatl]] (or ''[[Kukulkan]]'' in [[Yucatec Maya language|Yucatec]] and ''[[Q'uq'umatz]]'' in [[Kʼicheʼ language|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 [[University of California, Los Angeles|UCLA]], assertions of Toltec ancestry and claims that their elite ruling dynasties were founded by Quetzalcoatl have been made by such diverse civilizations as the [[Aztec]], the [[Kʼicheʼ people|Kʼicheʼ]] and the [[Itza people|Itza']] Mayas.{{sfnp|Anawalt|1990}}

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 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.{{sfnp|Smith|2007|p={{page needed|date=July 2021}}}}