Note 16 — Chapter I · ANCIENT MEXICO—CLIMATE AND PRODUCTS—PRIMITIVE RACES—AZTEC EMPIRE

[The uncertainty is not diminished by our being told that Tollan, Tullan, Tulan, or Tula (called also Tlapallan and Huehuetlapallan) was the original seat of this people, since we are still left in doubt whether the country so designated—like Aztlan, the supposed point of departure of the Aztecs—is to be located in New Mexico, California, the northwestern extremity of America, or in Asia. M. Brasseur de Bourbourg (whose later speculations, in which the name plays a conspicuous part, will be noticed more appropriately in the Appendix) found in the Quiché manuscripts mention of four Tollans, one of them “in the east, on the other side of the sea.” “But,” he adds, “in what part of the world is it to be placed? C’est là encore une question bien difficile à résoudre.” (Hist. des Nations civilisées du Mexique, tom. i. pp. 167, 168.) Nor will the etymology much help us. According to Buschmann, Tollan is derived from tolin, reed, and signifies “place of reeds,”—“Ort der Binsen, Platz mit Binsen gewachsen, juncetum.” (Über die aztekischen Ortsnamen, S. 682.) He refers, however, to a different derivation, suggested by a writer who has made it the basis of one of those extraordinary theories which are propounded from time to time, to account for the first diffusion of the human race, and more particularly for the original settlement of America. According to this theory, the cradle of mankind was the Himalayan Mountains. “But the collective name of these lofty regions was very anciently designated by appellations the roots of which were Tal, Tol, Tul, meaning tall, high, ... as it does yet in many languages, the English, Chinese, and Arabic for instance. Such were Tolo, Thala, Talaha, Tulan, etc., in the old Sanscrit and primitive languages of Asia. Whence came the Asiatic Atlas and also the Atlantes of the Greeks, who, spreading through the world westerly, gave these names to many other places and notions.... The Talas or Atlantes occupied or conquered Europe and Africa, nay, went to America in very early times.... In Greece they became Atalantes, Talautians of Epirus, Aetolians.... They gave name to Italy, Aitala meaning land eminent, ... to the Atlantic Ocean, and to the great Atlantis, or America, called in the Hindu books Atala or Tala-tolo, the fourth world, where dwelt giants or powerful men.... America is also filled with their names and deeds from Mexico and Carolina to Peru: the Tol-tecas, people of Tol, and Aztlan, Otolum near Palenque, many towns of Tula and Tolu; the Talas of Michuacan, the Matalans, Atalans, Tulukis, etc., of North America.” (C. S. Rafinesque, Atlantic Journal, Philadelphia, 1832-33.) It need hardly be added that Tula has also been identified with the equally unknown and long-sought-for ultima Thule, with the simplifying effect of bringing two streams of inquiry into one channel. Meanwhile, by a different kind of criticism, the whole question is dissipated into thin air, Tollan and Aztlan being resolved into names of mere mythical import, and the regions thus designated transferred from the earth to the bright domain of the sky, from which the descriptions in the legends appear to have been borrowed. See Brinton, Myths of the New World, pp. 88, 89.—K.]