Cholula

the horrible sacrifices that they made to their gods and the wealth and barbaric splendor of their rulers have often been described but their history in point of time covered short space and their art and religion was based in a large measure on achievements of the nations that had preceded them mayas and aztecs compared to greeks and romans remarkably close analogy may be drawn between the mayas and aztecs in the new world and the greeks and romans in the old as regards character achievements and relations one to the other the mayas like the greeks were an artistic and intellectual people who developed sculpture painting architecture astronomy and other arts and sciences to a high plane politically both were divided into communities or states that bickered and quarreled there were temporary leagues between certain cities but real unity only against a common enemy culturally both were one people in spite of dialectic differences for the warring factions were bound together by a common religion and a common thought to be sure the religion of the mayas was much more barbaric than that of the greeks but in each case the subject matter was idealized and beautified in art the aztecs like the romans were a brusque and warlike people who built upon the ruins of an earlier civilization that fell before the force of their arms and who made their most notable contributions to organization and government the toltecs stand just before the foreline of aztecan history and may fitly be compared to the etruscans they were the possessors of a culture derived in part from their brilliant contemporaries that was magnified to true greatness by their ruder successors the chichimecas the term chichimecas was applied by the more civilized tribes of the mexican highlands to those nomads outside the pale who dressed in skins and hunted with the bow and arrow some of these wandering groups spoke now one dialect but the term was also applied to the otomies who spoke a distinct language possibly through having been reduced in war certain of these wandering groups were drawn into civilization and when the toltecan cities began to decline they advanced to considerable power and prestige in fact the aztecs may be considered as originally chichimecan along with the people of texcoco in later times these city broken nomads looked back with considerable pride on their lowly origin the early life in the open is pictured interestingly in several documents including the map of tlotzin and the map of We have already seen how the splendid culture of the Toltecan cities broke down under the weight of civil war above 1220 AD.

To be sure, Cholula appears to have kept alive the flame of Toltecan religion and art up to the advent of the Spaniards.

Azcapotzalco, Colhuacan, and other towns near the lakes that had been established during the Toltecan period were able to hold their own for a time against the newer order.

xolotl founder of the dynasty of texcoco makes his first appearance in the valley of mexico in twelve twenty five five years after the dispersion of the toltecs according to the codex xolotl he viewed the abandoned cities but neither he

The College of Medicine and Academy of Arts and Science are maintained at the expense of the town, free to all who care to go.

The famous pyramid of Cholula is but eight miles from the city.

Streetcars run out about four times a day and charge fifty cents, first class, a trip.

On the way, we passed a large rock, which has caused a sensation lately.

One man who was talking over it said, "Please do not put it in your paper because Mexico has a nasty name for foreigners now." That stone, he continued, was used by duelists to hide their victim's body, and when the people perceived a stench, they reported it to the police, who always investigated and had the body buried.

If that is true, why is it that everybody considers the find new and startling, and no one has come forth to say he knows what use it was put to before this? If the police investigated and took out the bodies, why did they not have the hole filled up? And why are there so many skeletons in it at the present day? He did not try to answer these questions, but only begged our silence.

Cholula retains little of its old-time grandeur.

At the commencement of the sixteenth century, Cortes compared it to the largest cities of Spain.

To the west, in the Valley of Mexico, there was a lull.

It was after the Tlatelco culture, but its next big cities, Cholula, Cuecuilco, and eventually Teotihuacan, have yet to be built.

To the east, Maya civilization is hitting its stride.

Big cities in the Paten and the Guatemalan highlands are growing fast.