Tula: Capital of the Toltecs and Its Atlantean Warriors

Tula, known to the Aztecs as Tollan, was the capital of the Toltecs and the dominant city of central Mexico between about 950 and 1150. Its most famous monuments are the colossal Atlantean columns carved as warriors that stand on top of Pyramid B. After its fall, Tula became a legendary golden age in Aztec memory, and its relationship with the Maya city of Chichen Itza remains one of the great puzzles of Mesoamerican history.

Background: central Mexico after Teotihuacan

For several centuries, Teotihuacan had been the greatest city in Mesoamerica. Its decline in the sixth and seventh centuries left central Mexico divided among regional centres such as Xochicalco, Cholula and Cacaxtla. This period, between about 650 and 900, is known as the Epiclassic.

Tula grew during this time on a ridge above the Tula River in what is now the state of Hidalgo, about 80 km north of Mexico City. The earliest major settlement, now called Tula Chico, developed from around 650. Its people may have included migrants from the north and from the Bajío region, as well as groups from the Basin of Mexico, and Nahuatl was probably among the languages spoken there.

The city at its height

Between about 950 and 1150, during the Early Postclassic period, Tula became the largest city in central Mexico. Archaeological surveys suggest it covered around 13–16 square kilometres, with an estimated population of 30,000 to 60,000 people in the city itself and many more in the surrounding countryside.

The ceremonial centre, Tula Grande, was built around a large plaza. On its sides stood Pyramid C, the largest temple mound, Pyramid B, two ballcourts, and long colonnaded halls including the so-called Burnt Palace. The city’s workshops produced obsidian tools from sources such as Pachuca, and Tula traded with distant regions; Central American pottery and other imports have been found there.

Toltec art emphasised warfare and sacrifice. Reliefs show processions of armed warriors, jaguars and coyotes, eagles eating hearts, and feathered serpents. A skull rack, or tzompantli, displayed the heads of sacrificed victims, and chacmools, reclining stone figures holding a dish on the belly, received offerings.

Pyramid B and the Atlantean warriors

Pyramid B, also called the Temple of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli (the morning star aspect of Quetzalcoatl), is Tula’s best-known monument. It is a five-stepped platform whose sides were faced with relief panels of jaguars, coyotes, eagles and a composite creature often interpreted as the feathered serpent.

On its summit stand four colossal columns, each about 4.6 metres tall, carved in sections as warriors. They wear feathered headdresses, butterfly-shaped breastplates and back shields in the form of a sun disc, and they hold atlatls (spear-throwers) and bundles of darts. Together with square pillars carved with warriors, they once supported the roof of the temple. Archaeologists found them broken and buried in a trench beside the pyramid and re-erected them in the twentieth century.

To the north of the pyramid runs the Coatepantli, or “serpent wall”, decorated with reliefs of serpents swallowing human skeletons. In front of the pyramid stood a great colonnaded hall, an architectural form that may have been used for assemblies of warriors and nobles.

Tula and Chichen Itza

Tula has long been linked with Chichen Itza in Yucatán, more than 1,000 km away. The Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza closely resembles Pyramid B, and both sites have warrior columns, chacmools, feathered serpent imagery, skull racks and colonnaded halls. Maya chronicles also speak of the arrival of a ruler called Kukulcan, a Maya translation of Quetzalcoatl.

For much of the twentieth century scholars explained this as a Toltec conquest of Chichen Itza. Newer dating has complicated the picture, because some “Toltec-style” buildings at Chichen Itza may be as old as, or older than, their counterparts at Tula. Many archaeologists now see a shared international style spread through trade, elite contacts and religion, with influence flowing in both directions.

Decline and legend

Tula declined around 1150. Parts of the ceremonial centre were burned, and many monuments were deliberately broken. The reasons are uncertain; possible factors include drought, conflict between factions, and pressure from migrating groups from the north. Smaller-scale occupation continued, and in the Aztec period the area was again inhabited.

The Aztecs regarded the Toltecs as the founders of civilisation. In Nahuatl, the word toltecatl came to mean a skilled artist or craftsman, and Aztec rulers claimed descent from Toltec royalty to legitimise their power. They dug into the ruins of Tula and carried sculptures away, some of which have been found in the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan.

Aztec-era chronicles tell of the priest-king Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, who ruled Tollan in peace until he was tricked by the god Tezcatlipoca and left, promising according to some versions to return. A later ruler, Huemac, is said to have presided over the city’s final collapse. These stories mix myth and possible historical memory and cannot be confirmed by archaeology.

Myths and facts

The name “Atlantes” sometimes leads people to connect the columns with the legendary island of Atlantis. In fact the term comes from classical architecture, where an atlas or atlante is a column carved as a male figure, by analogy with the Greek giant Atlas. It says nothing about the origin of the Toltecs, and there is no link to Atlantis.

A second popular story is that the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II mistook Hernán Cortés for the returning Quetzalcoatl in 1519, because Cortés supposedly arrived in the year of the god’s prophesied return. This tale appears in sources written decades after the conquest, and many historians now think it was shaped or even created after the event, partly by Spanish writers and partly by Indigenous chroniclers explaining the disaster.

Finally, the “Toltecs” of modern self-help books and popular spirituality have little to do with the people of Tula. They draw on the Aztec ideal of the wise Toltec artist rather than on archaeological evidence about the city.

Rediscovery and archaeology

The French explorer Désiré Charnay dug at Tula in the 1880s and was among the first to link it with Chichen Itza. In 1941 the Mexican historian Wigberto Jiménez Moreno, comparing place names in colonial sources, argued convincingly that the site at Tula, Hidalgo, was the historical Tollan; earlier writers had often identified Tollan with Teotihuacan. From 1940 the archaeologist Jorge R. Acosta excavated and restored Tula Grande over two decades, re-erecting the Atlantes. Later projects in the 1970s and afterwards, including surveys of the wider city and its residential districts, showed that Tula was a true urban centre and not only a ceremonial site.

Timeline

• c. 650–900: Tula Chico develops as an early urban centre.
• c. 900–950: The ceremonial centre shifts to Tula Grande.
• c. 950–1150: Peak of Toltec Tula; Pyramid B and the Atlantean columns are built.
• c. 1150: Decline, with burning and destruction of the ceremonial centre.
• c. 1400s: Aztecs dig into the ruins and remove sculptures.
• 1880s: Désiré Charnay explores the site.
• 1940: Jorge R. Acosta begins large-scale excavation and restoration.
• 1941: Wigberto Jiménez Moreno identifies the site as the historical Tollan.

Why it matters

Tula was the main power of central Mexico between the fall of Teotihuacan and the rise of the Aztecs. Its warrior imagery reflects a more militaristic age in Mesoamerica, and its legend as Tollan shaped how later peoples, especially the Aztecs, understood their own history and right to rule.