The Stone of the Sun and the First Chapter of the History of Mexico/The first chapter of Mexican history
THE FIRST CHAPTER OF MEXICAN HISTORY
Founded then in the monument itself and other authorities who present data in agreement with it, we believe that we can assert, now with certainy, the following facts:
The Toltec race has a historic reality and attained notable advancement.
It arrived on the Mexican Plateau about the year 596 of the Christian Era; there were just ending, in particular in the valley of Mexico, violent manifestations, probably eruptive, which buried under their lavas human relics and fossils of the Quaternary and Pleistocene. This was the catastrophe to which they attributed the end of the third age of the world, considering the remains of the animals that they found to be those of giants. Apparently the flows of tezontle (lava of
Ajusco, of Xictli, and of the Sierra de Santa Catarina), described with so much precision by the Anales de Cuauhtitlan when it says that “the red rock boiled,” date from then.
Toward the year 700 the Toltecs were organized and elected a monarch, establishing themselves in a city to which they gave the name of another older one where they had lived in earlier times. There are reasons to believe that the first Tula, or at least the ancient place of origin of the people of Huemántzin, lay to the southeast, in the famous kingdom of the Quich’es of Chiapas, race with which the Ulmecas present more than one affinity, and the first noticed of which date back to about a thousand years B.C. Only the southern fertility and the opulent resources of that zone could engender in primitive times a culture such as that attained by that people. When the Toltecs established themselves on the Plateau, we must believe that they were already civilized. If by any chance, they came from the north on the last occasion, the origin of their culture must anyway have been in the southern districts. This is so much the more likely, since there are data of the fall of an empire in Yucatan toward the end of the sixth century A.D., which perhaps started the migration that appeared on the Plateau in 596.
The Toltec power ended about 1070-1116; but the capital elements of their civilization were transmitted to the surviving races, and at the time of the Spanish Conquest, the Acolhuas, Mexicans, Mayas, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, etc., etc., preserved them in greater or less degree. All accepted the same chronological system, which is the original and loftiest contribution of the aborigines to human culture; it is necessary to attribute it to a race which has served as trunk to the others, or which has at least, imposed its culture upon all. Tracing back in the traditions of the peoples most widely separated geographically and most foreign to each other in their languages (Cakchiquels, Mayas, Nahuas, etc.), the name of the Toltecs is always found. It is not impossible that these have received from the Ulmecas some elements of culture, which they developed until bringing them to their maximum flower and splendor; barring that they were the Ulmecas themselves.
Also, the various races, inhabitants of the ancient territory which today is Mexico, resembling each other in many characteristic qualities, reveal an extraordinary artistic tendency; in the greater number of cases they applied this skill to expressing the ideas of the theogony, the cosmogony, and principally of the astronomy and chronology
which were in essence derived from the Toltecs. Grandiose in architecture, skilled although not perfected in painting, they surpassed in sculpturing stone and had no rival as decorators. Most beautiful their stucco decorations and works in freestone; their sculptures and reliefs in hard rock are masterpieces, unsurpassed as to beauty and workmanship in any country of the earth.
In the year 1064, the tribe of the Aztecs, also of Nahua race, undertook a pilgrimage, going out from a place the exact location of which is not yet known; it is nevertheless a fact—the codices state it—that the Aztecs began their journey in water craft.
In 1227 they arrive at Chapultepec and in 1257 kindle the new fire in that place. Their chronological system is the same as that of the Toltecs; the cycles of 52 years show it.
In 1323 they definitely found the city of Tenochtitlan; a little before, ten or twelve years, they had encountered the eagle upon the cactus. About 1479 a grand cycle of 416 years from the beginning of their pilgrimage was completed, a fact which the Aztecs celebrate with extraordinary sacrifices and festivities; perhaps then they constructed a notable commemorative monument.
Finaly, 13 years (a tlalpilli) before the chronological cycle (104 years) should end, reckoning from the creation of the world according to their ideas, the Spanish conqueror arrived, and in the year Yei calli (1521) the empire of the Mexicans was destroyed, the last of its monarchs being the hero, whom they symbolically called “The Eagle Who Falls.” The year 1521 A.D. was 5918 of the chronology of the autochthonous nation. As an original and most valuable contribution to human culture it left, as we have already said, its arts and calendar, which is based totally on astronomical observations. Arts, history, and calendar are found in synthesis in the stone of the museum.