What a tangled web we weave

I'm getting behind again.

On our way to Mexico City, we went to Teotihuacan, then to Tula to see the ruins of Tollan, which was the capital of the Toltec empire for awhile.

The Toltec empire arose after the fall of Teotihuacan, but either fell apart before the Mexica (aka Aztecs) came into the area or was destroyed by them. After the Mexica had been around for awhile, one of their kings burnt all their history books and rewrote their history to make them the heirs to the Toltecs. The Mexica adopted Toltec artistic styles and religious practices.

Some legends have it that the Toltec king Kukulkan left Tollan when the people decided to replace Quetzalcoatl as their chief god. The new supreme deity was Huitzilpotchtli, who required human sacrifices. Kukulkan took some loyal soldiers and made his way to the Yucatan, where they either founded or conquered Chichen Itza. Or maybe Kukulkan was mythical and Chichen Itza just had close trading relations with the Toltecs. Whatever the case, Chichen Itza is quite different from other cities in the Mayan areas and seems to have a lot of Toltec influences in art, architecture and religion.

A lot of art and architecture in the ancient cities is quite similar across most of the sites we have been to. I was struck by how many of the sculptures we saw at Tula were stylistically quite different from what we have seen at other sites.

A few of our pictures are at https://picasaweb.google.com/100719842898341494426/20120109Tula

There is lots of Toltec stuff at the National Museum of Anthropology, which I will write about later.

While we were at the ruins of Tollan, there was a large grass fire burning in the gulley just outside the reconstructed part of the city. It looked like a deliberate burn had gone out of control. A fire truck showed up near the start of our visit, then left shortly before we did. It looked like they had managed to regain control. Deliberate grass fires seem to be very common in Mexico: we have seen them everywhere we have been, from Chihuahua down to Oaxaca. It struck us as ironic that this grass fire was very near to a ruin known as the "burnt palace".