412 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



ascendancy lasted from about the nth to the i5th century, when 

 they were in their turn overthrown and absorbed by the historical 

 Nahuan confederacy of the Aztecs 1 whose capital was Tenochtitlan 

 (the present city of Mexico), the Acolhuas (capital Tezcuco), and 

 the Tepanecs (capital Tlacopan). 



Thus* the Aztec Empire reduced by the Conquistadores in 

 1520 had but a brief record, although the Aztecs themselves as 

 well as many other tribes of Nahuatl speech, must have been 

 in contact with the more civilised Huaxtecan peoples for centuries 

 before the appearance of the Spaniards on the scene. It was 

 during these ages that the Nahuas " borrowed much from the 

 Mayas," as Forstermann puts it, without greatly benefiting by the 

 process. Thus the Maya gods, for the most part of a relatively 

 mild type like the Mayas themselves, become in the hideous 

 Aztec pantheon ferocious demons with an insatiable thirst for 

 blood, so that the teocalli, " gods' houses," were transformed to 

 human shambles, where on solemn occasions the victims were said 

 to have numbered tens of thousands' 2 . 



Besides the Aztecs and their allies, the elevated Mexican 



Uncultured pl ateaux were occupied by several other relatively 



Mexican civilized nations, such as the Miztecs and Zapotccs 



Peoples. f /-\ m -11 x JT 



oi Oajaca, the Tarascos and neighbouring Matlalt- 

 zincas of Michoacan, all of whom spoke independent stock lan- 

 guages, and the Totonacs of Vera Cruz, who were of Huaxtecan 

 speech, and were probably the earliest representatives of the 



1 Named from the shadowy land of Aztlan away to the north, where they 

 long dwelt in the seven legendary caves of Chicomoztoc, whence they migrated 

 at some unknown period to the lacustrine region, where they founded Tenoch- 

 titlan, seat of their empire. 



- "The gods of the Mayas appear to have been less sanguinary than those 

 of the Nahuas. The immolation of a dog was with them enough for an occa- 

 sion that would have been celebrated by the Nahuas with hecatombs of victims. 

 Human sacrifices did however take place" (De Nadaillac, p. 266), though they 

 were as nothing compared with the countless victims demanded by the Aztec 

 gods. "The dedication by Ahuizotl of the great temple of Huitzilopochtli in 

 1487 is alleged to have been celebrated by the butchery of 72,344 victims," and 

 "under Montezuma II. 12,000 captives are said to have perished" on one occa- 

 sion (if), p. 297); all no doubt gross exaggerations, but leaving a large margin 

 for perhaps the most terrrible chapter of horrors in the records of natural 

 religions. 



