- This article is about the historic cities. In the science fiction television series Stargate SG-1, the "Tollan" are an advanced human civilization; see: Tollan (Stargate).
Tollan, Tolan, or Tolán is the name used for the capital city of two empires of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica; first for Teotihuacan, and later for the Toltec capital of Tula.
The name means "Place of Cattails" in the Nahuatl language, with the figurative sense of a densely populated "place where people are thick as reeds". Names with the same meaning were used in Maya and other native Mexican languages.
Teotihuacan seems to have been the first city known by this name. After the collapse of the Teotihuacan empire, central Mexico broke into various petty states. The Toltec created the first sizable Mexican empire after the fall of Teotihuacan, and their capital was referred to by the same name as a reference to the earlier greatness of Teotihuacan.
In Aztec accounts at the time of the arrival of the Conquistadores, Teotihuacan and the Toltec capital sometimes seem to be confused and conflated.
The epithet "Tollan" was also sometimes applied to any great metropolis or capital. Cholula, for example, was sometimes called "Tollan Cholula", and the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán was likewise given the title "Tollan". The Mixtec translation of this, Ñuu Co'yo is still the Mixtec name for Mexico City to this day.
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- This page was last modified on 26 September 2008, at 18:41.
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