Toltecs are linked to ancient Mexican lineages, popularized by Carlos Castaneda's books on Don Juan.
Names in the Basque Country, like Antxone, Aitor, Arrixaka, Ihintza, Itzal, Elixane, Maialen, Mitxoleta, Nekane, Txori, Zeltzin, Urraca, or Yanamari, sound not only alluring and exotic, but closer to indigenous Mexican, and South and Central American languages than to any of the Indo-European language families.
It may here be noted that while the Mexican empire was for centuries great and powerful in all that is usually regarded as power and greatness in our civilization of to-day, it never reached the height attained by the Peruvians about 14,000 years ago under their Inca sovereigns, for as regards the general well-being of the people, the justice and beneficence of the government, the equitable nature of the land tenure, and the pure and religious life of the inhabitants, the Peruvian empire of those days might be considered a traditional though faint echo of the golden age of the Toltecs on the mother-continent of Atlantis.
Mexicans, Egyptians, and Jews, who associated this time with flood myths, particularly tied to the Pleiades constellation.
Ancient cultures, from the Egyptians to the Mexicans, regulated their calendars by the Pleiades’ rising or setting.
Mexican traditions link the Pleiades’ culmination to a world-destroying flood.
Mexican codices depict Tzitzimime, falling stars (Taurid meteors) with a rattlesnake glyph for the Pleiades, associated with the end of the world.
North and Central America: Indigenous legends speak of deities expelled from heaven, such as Himano among the Parut people and Sut in Mexican traditions.
I find in the "Report of United States Explorations for a Route for a Pacific Railroad" a description of a New Mexican Indian priest, who foretells the result of a proposed war by placing a piece of wood in a bowl of water, and causing it to turn to the right or left, or sink or rise, as he directs it.
The Etruscans set their temples squarely with the cardinal points of the compass; so did the Egyptians, the Mexicans, and the Mound Builders of America.
"When we first look at Quichua, with its multitude of words, beginning with hu, and its great preponderance of q's, it seems almost as odd as Mexican.
"I have recognized in your memoir on the division of time among the Mexican nations, compared with those of Asia, some very striking analogies between the Toltec characters and institutions observed on the banks of the Nile.
In reality, the intercalation of the Mexicans being thirteen days on each cycle of fifty-two years, comes to the same thing as that of the Julian calendar, which is one day in four years; and consequently supposes the duration of the year to be three hundred and sixty-five days six hours.
… The fact of the intercalation (by the Mexicans) of thirteen days every cycle that is, the use of a year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter--is a proof that it was borrowed from the Egyptians, or that they had a common origin." ("Antiquities of America," pp.
The Mexican century began on the 26th of February, and the 26th of February was celebrated from the time of Nabonassor, 747 B.C., because the Egyptian priests, conformably to their astronomical observations, had fixed the beginning of the month Toth, and the commencement of their year, at noon on that day.
The five intercalated days to make up the three hundred and sixty-five days were called by the Mexicans Nemontemi, or useless, and on them they transacted no business; while the Egyptians, during that epoch, celebrated the festival of the birth of their gods, as attested by Plutarch and others.
THE CENTRAL AMERICAN AND MEXICAN COLONIES.
The misuse of "Aztec" to mean "Mexican" stems from historical conflations of "Mexihco" and "Mexica." During colonial times, "Mexicano" referred to inhabitants of the island of Mexihco.
This conflation was further complicated by 19th-century nationalist rhetoric, which portrayed the Aztecs as the founders of the modern Mexican nation, despite the extinction of the Mexica as a distinct group during colonial times due to epidemics, wars, and assimilation.
"Aztec" has been widely misapplied to refer to various Mesoamerican cultures and modern Mexicans.
Mounds with sacrificial altars in Europe are compared to Mexican pyramidal temples.
Evidence of this domestication was found in Guilá Naquitz Cave and four other Mexican caves during excavations in the 1960s, possibly starting in 1959.
He delivers a detailed and respectful account of pre-Columbian Mexican history and cultures.
75.) While the famous Mexican calendar stone shows that the sun was commonly called tonatiuh but when it was referred to as the god of the Deluge it was then called Atl-tona-ti-uh, or At-onatiuh.
(Valentini's "Mexican Calendar Stone," art. Maya Archæology, p.
We thus find the sons of Ad at the base of all the most ancient races of men, to wit, the Hebrews, the Arabians, the Chaldeans, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the Central Americans; testimony that all these races traced their beginning back to a dimly remembered Ad-lantis.
The Mexican alphabet possessed a d.
Landa's D (T) is a disk with lines inside the four quarters, the allowed Mexican symbol for a day or sun.
The Mexican scholar, Señor Melgar ("North Americans of Antiquity," p.
Torquemada admits the existence of this tradition among them, and agrees with the Indian historians, who affirm that this was the first woman in the world, who bore children, and from whom all mankind are descended." ("Mexican Antiquities," vol.
("Mexican Antiquities," vol.
The legends of the Old World which underlie Genesis, and were used by Milton in the "Paradise Lost," appear in the Mexican legends of a war of angels in heaven, and the fall of Zou-tem-que (Soutem, Satan--Arabic, Shatana?) and the other rebellious spirits.
"They scattered its builders to all parts of the earth," says the Mexican legend.
Both the Jews and Mexicans worshipped toward the east.
As David leaped and danced before the ark of the Lord, so did the Mexican monarchs before their idols.
The Mexican temple, like the Jewish, faced the east.
"As among the Jews the ark was a sort of portable temple, in which the Deity was supposed to be continually present, so among the Mexicans, the Cherokees, and the Indians of Michoacan and Honduras, an ark was held in the highest veneration, and was considered an object too sacred to be touched by any but the priests." (Kingsborough, "Mex.
The Jewish custom of laying the sins of the people upon the head of an animal, and turning him out into the wilderness, had its counterpart among the Mexicans, who, to cure a fever, formed a dog of maize paste and left it by the roadside, saying the first passer-by would carry away the illness.
Both Jews and Mexicans offered water to a stranger that be might wash his feet; both ate dust in token of humility; both anointed with oil; both sacrificed prisoners; both periodically separated the women, and both agreed in the strong and universal idea of uncleanness connected with that period.
"Then the Mexican midwife gave the child to taste of the water, putting her moistened fingers in its mouth, and said, 'Take this; by this thou hast to live on the earth, to grow and to flourish; through this we get all things that support existence on the earth; receive it.' Then with moistened fingers she touched the breast of the child, and said, 'Behold the pure water that washes and cleanses thy heart, that removes all filthiness; receive it: may the goddess see good to purify And cleanse thine heart.' Then the midwife poured water upon the head of the child, saying, 'O my grandson--my son--take this water of the Lord of the world, which is thy life, invigorating and refreshing, washing and cleansing.
The Mexicans hung up the heads of their sacrificed enemies; this was also a Jewish custom:
The figure below represents a gigantic granite head, found near the volcano of Tuxtla, in the Mexican State of Vera Cruz, at Caxapa.
On the American continents we find that the Peruvians, the Central Americans, the Mexicans, and some of the Indian tribes, followed the same practice.
"He was skilled in many arts: he invented" (that is, imported) "gem-cutting and metal-casting; he originated letters, and invented the Mexican calendar.
The ancient Mexican legends say that, after the Flood, Coxcox and his wife, after wandering one hundred and four years, landed at Antlan, and passed thence to Capultepec, and thence to Culhuacan, and lastly to Mexico.
313, I find a remarkable representation of an elephant, taken from an ancient Mexican manuscript.
MEXICAN REPRESENTATION OF ELEPHANT.
The Mexicans manufactured bronze, and the Incas mined iron near Lake Titicaca; and the civilization of this latter region, as we will show, probably dated back to Atlantean times.
The Peruvians, Mexicans, Central Americans, Egyptians, Phœnicians, and Hebrews each had a powerful hereditary priesthood.
The ancient Mexicans believed that the sun-god would destroy the world in the last night of the fifty-second year, and that he would never come back.
Jove, with the thunder-bolts in his hand, is duplicated in the Mexican god of thunder, Mixcoatl, who is represented holding a bundle of arrows.
Dionysus, or Bacchus, is represented by the Mexican god Texcatzoncatl, the god of wine.
Both had the institution of marriage, an important part of the ceremony consisting in the joining of hands; both recognized divorce, and the Peruvians and Mexicans established special courts to decide cases of this kind.
The Mexicans added five intercalary days; and the Egyptians, in the time of Amunoph I., had already the same practice.
The method of citing a date by means of signs and numbers is quite similar with Asiatics and Mexicans.
Cabera thinks he finds analogies between the Mexican and Egyptian calendars.
Adopting the view of several writers that the Mexican year began on the 26th of February, be finds the date to correspond with the beginning of the Egyptian year.
The Mexicans represent an eclipse of the moon as the moon being devoured by a dragon; and the Hindoos have precisely the same figure; and both nations continued to use this expression long after they had discovered the real meaning of an eclipse.
Not only infant baptism by water was found both in the old Babylonian religion and among the Mexicans, but an offering of cakes, which is recorded by the prophet Jeremiah as part of the worship of the Babylonian goddess-mother, "the Queen of Heaven," was also found in the ritual of the Aztecs.
390.) Cortes says the Mexican priests were very strict in the practice of honesty and chastity, and any deviation was punished with death.
The attempts that have been made to trace the origin of Mexican civilization to Asia have not as vet led to any sufficiently conclusive facts.
"The most important among the American traditions are the Mexican, for they appear to have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic paintings before any contact with Europeans.
According to these documents, the Noah of the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli or Tezpi.
"The document, however, that gives the most valuable information," says Lenormant, "as to the cosmogony of the Mexicans is one known as 'Codex Vaticanus,' from the library where it is preserved.
The native Mexican historian, Ixtlilxochitl, gave this as the Toltec legend of the Flood:
There you will find represented the Flood, and with great emphasis, by the accumulation of all those symbols with which the ancient Mexicans conveyed the idea of water: a tub of standing water, drops springing out--not two, as heretofore in the symbol for Atl, water--but four drops; the picture for moisture, a snail; above, a crocodile, the king ofCALENDAR STONECALENDAR STONEthe rivers.
There can be doubt these are the Mexican Noah, Coxcox, and his wife, Xochiquetzal; and at the same time it is evident (the Calendar stone, we know, was made in A.D., 1478) that the story of them, and the pictures representing the story, have not been invented by the Catholic clergy, but really existed among these nations long before the Conquest."
Compare the Sanscrit "Dyaus" or "Dyaus-pitar," the Greek "Theos" and Zeus, the Latin "Deus" and "Jupiter," the Keltic "Dia" and "Ta," pronounced "Thyah" (seeming to bear affinity to the Egyptian Tau), the Jewish "Jah" or "Yah" and lastly the Mexican "Teo" or "Zeo."
Tertullian in his De Baptismo says that they were promised in consequence "regeneration and the pardon of all their perjuries." The Scandinavian nations practised baptism of new-born children; and when we turn to Mexico and Peru we find infant baptism there as a solemn ceremonial, consisting of water sprinkling, the sign of the cross, and prayers for the washing away of sin (see Humboldt's Mexican Researches and Prescott's Mexico).
Lord Kingsborough in his Mexican Antiquities (vol.
250) says: "As among the Jews the ark was a sort of portable temple in which the deity was supposed to be continually present, so among the Mexicans, the Cherokees and the Indians of Michoacan and Honduras, an ark was held in the highest veneration and was considered an object too sacred to be touched by any but the priests."
Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican Deity, is said to have come from "the distant east." He is described as a white man with a flowing beard.
(N.B.—The Indians of North and South America are beardless.) He originated letters and regulated the Mexican calendar.
The same story in its every detail preserved amongst the Mexicans (each tribe having its own version), the people of Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, and almost every tribe of North American Indians.
It may here be noted that while the Mexican empire was for centuries great and powerful in all that is usually regarded as power and greatness in our civilization of to-day, it never reached the height attained by the Peruvians about 14,000 years ago under their Inca sovereigns, for as regards the general well-being of the people, the justice and beneficence of the government, the equitable nature of the land tenure, and the pure and religious life of the inhabitants, the Peruvian empire of those days might be considered a traditional though faint echo of the golden age of the Toltecs on the mother-continent of Atlantis.
It was only with the coming of the savage Aztecs that the harmless Mexican ritual was supplemented with the blood of human sacrifices, which drenched the altars of their war-god, Huitzilopochtli, and the tearing out of the hearts of the victims on the summit of the Teocali may be regarded as a direct survival of the elemental-worship of their Turanian ancestors in Atlantis.
1524: Pedro de Alvarado, called the Adelantado, a Spanish title formerly given to a governor of a province, and by his Mexican allies, Tonatiuh, the Sun or Sun-God, reached the city of Gumarcaah, or Utlatlan in the early spring of 1524
It was the symbol of symbols, the mystical Tau, 'the bidden wisdom,' not only of the ancient Egyptians but also of the Chaldeans, Phœnicians, Mexicans, Peruvians, and of every other ancient people commemorated in history, in either hemisphere, and is formed very similarly to our letter T, with a roundlet, or oval, placed immediately above it.
On the Mexican feroher before alluded to, and which is most elaborately carved in bass-relief on a massive piece of polygonous granite, constituting a portion of a cyclopean wall, the cross is enclosed within the ring, and accompanying it are four tassel-like ornaments, graved equally well.
But by far the most remarkable example of this form of the Cross in the New World is that which appears on a second type of the Mexican feroher, engraved on a tablet of gypsum, and which is described at length by its discoverer, Captain du Paix, and depicted by his friend, M.
Bradford thinks that some of the Egyptian pyramids, and those which with some reason it has been supposed are the most ancient, are precisely similar to the Mexican teocalli." ("North Americans of Antiquity" p.
And there is in Egypt another form of pyramid called the mastaba, which, like the Mexican, was flattened on the top; while in Assyria structures flattened like the Mexican are found.
points, while many of the Mexican pyramids do likewise.
The Egyptian pyramids were penetrated by small passage-ways; so were the Mexican.
Atl-tona-ti-uh: The Mexican calendar stone refers to the sun as Atl-tona-ti-uh, linking it to the deluge and again to Atlantis.
War of Angels and the Fall: The legends of the Old World which underlie Genesis, and were used by Milton in the "Paradise Lost," appear in the Mexican legends of a war of angels in heaven, and the fall of Zou-tem-que (Soutem, Satan—Arabic, Shatana?) and the other rebellious spirits.
Both Jews and Mexicans worshipped toward the east.
Quetzalcoatl was a high-priest and god of the Toltecs, credited with various cultural advancements such as gem-cutting, metal-casting, and the invention of the Mexican calendar.
In Tylor's "Researches into the Early History of Mankind," an ancient Mexican manuscript features a remarkable depiction of an elephant, further reinforcing the hypothesis of knowledge transfer from a civilization where elephants were known.