History

Tula rose to prominence after the fall of Teotihuacan (c. 650 AD), filling the political vacuum left by the collapse of the first great Mexican imperial city. By 900–1000 AD, Tula had become the dominant power of central Mexico, controlling trade networks that extended from the American Southwest (turquoise) to the Maya lowlands (cacao, jade). The city’s patron deity was Quetzalcoatl — the Feathered Serpent — and Toltec mythology associates Tula with a semi-divine ruler-priest named Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, who, after being driven from the city by political rivals, was said to have sailed east promising to return. The Aztec later confused this legend with the appearance of Hernán Cortés, with consequences that shaped the conquest of Mexico.

Tula was abandoned and largely burned around 1150 AD, apparently through a combination of internal conflict and external pressure from migrating groups. The Aztec, who rose to power in the Valley of Mexico two centuries later, regarded Tula as a paradise of civilisation — a place where maize grew in all colours, cotton grew pre-dyed, and the Toltec were all artists and sages. This idealisation shaped how Aztec culture conceived of its own legitimacy: Aztec emperors traced their genealogy to Toltec royal lines, and “Toltec” became the ultimate descriptor of cultural sophistication in Mesoamerican discourse.

The relationship between Tula and Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán — 1,700 km away — remains one of Mesoamerican archaeology’s most debated questions. The Temple of the Warriors at Chichén Itzá reproduces Tula’s Pyramid B with extraordinary fidelity: the same Atlante columns (smaller scale), the same colonnaded hall, the same chacmool reclining figure at the top of the staircase, the same frieze motifs of jaguars, eagles, and skeletal figures. Whether this reflects Toltec military conquest, Ítza migration from the Gulf Coast, or the diffusion of a shared Postclassic ideological koine across Mesoamerica is still unresolved.