Toltecs, The

The Toltecs were the predecessors of the Aztecs in central Mexico. It is generally accepted that they ruled between the 10^th and 12^th centuries AD. Some rather pathetic attempts by Theosophists and New Agers have been made to link the Toltecs with Atlantis. Annie Besant,  the theosophist, informed us that the Toltecs were 27 feet tall!

William Scott-Elliot, also a theosophist, described the Toltecs as “averaging about eight feet during the period of their ascendency, but of course dwindling, as all races did, to the dimensions that are common today.”^(a)

In the Toltec city of Tula, in the Mexican state of Hidalgo are 15-foot high statues known as Atlantes, which is also an architectural term used to describe supporting columns carved in the shape of a man.^(b)

Nevertheless, Dominique Görlitz has written two-part article for Atlantisforschung in which he offers the suggestion that the Toltecs had been influenced by Basque visitors^(c). “In addition to the well-known cultural parallels between the peoples of the Old and New Worlds, many Native American cultures have old myths about foreign culture bringers that relate to the beginnings of their culture and agriculture.”

John B. Newman, writing ^[0488.31] decades before Ignatius Donnelly and drawing on comments by Marco Polo, speculated that what became known as Toltecs had originally been part of a Chinese fleet intent on invading Japan that had been blown off course and ended up on the western shores of what is now Mexico. The settled there although in regular conflict with the native Aztecs. Unfortunately, Newman and Marco Polo have their chronologies mixed up as the the fleet in question was dispatched by Kublai Khan, long after the Toltecs arrived in Mexico.

^(a) https://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/soa/soa17.htm

^(b) Tula – Mysterious City of the Toltecs – The Maritime Explorer (archive.org)

^(c) Sind die ‘weißen Götter’ der Guanchen mit jenen der Tolteken identisch? – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)