Ancient Civilizations of Mexico and Central America

Aztecan History

The history of the Aztecs has a mythological preamble in common with other nations of Mexico. The Chicomoztoc or Seven Caves must not be considered historical but simply man’s place of emergence from the underworld. The general conception of an existence within the earth that preceded the existence upon the earth is found very widely among North American Indians. It is likewise impossible to locate the Island of Aztlan, that served, according to several codices, as the starting place of the Mexican migration. The northern origin for the Aztecan tribe to which so much attention has been paid need not have been far from the Valley of Mexico, since in their entire recorded peregrination they hardly traveled eighty miles.

Owing to the ineffectiveness of the Mexican time count Aztecan chronology is far from fixed. The year was known by the day with which it began and as this day ran the permutation of four names and thirteen numbers a cycle was fifty-two years in length. No method of keeping the cycles in their proper order seems to have been devised except the laborious one of putting down every year in sequence whether or not an event occurred in it. According to different authorities the year 1 Stone which begins the historical account in the Aubin Codex was 648, 1064, or 1168 in the European calendar, each date differing from the others by multiples of fifty-two years. The last base, 1168, is correct; this being the epoch of the Toltec Era established by Quetzalcoatl.