VALLEY OF MEXICO — VAILLANT 529 



Mexico. Further research should clear up the identity of these 

 tribes, as either colonists driven out of the valley or outlying branches 

 of the same group who retained their tribal organization although 

 modifying their culture, or perhaps people completely different cul- 

 turally and tribally who were given this name as a generic distinction, 

 even as the discoverers of America called its inhabitants Indians. 



With this final identification, connection between traditions and 

 archeology ceases, so that we cannot identify the makers of the 

 Cuicuilco-Ticoman and Copilco-Zacatenco cultures, often grouped 

 under the term "Archaic." True, the mythology records giants as 

 inhabiting the earth before the advent of the Toltecs, but the skeletons 

 found in graves of these periods give no evidence of extraordinary 

 size. It would be tempting to align with mythical destructions of 

 the world the rise in lake level which affected the Zacatenco culture 

 or the lava flow from the Pedregal which surrounded the ruins of the 

 Cuicuilco pyramid. As these successive destructions were by jaguars, 

 wind, fire, and water, the order is wrong for such an interpretation 

 of the geological disturbances affecting the early cultures, but it is 

 possible that a vague folk memory of such events may have been 

 incorporated in the myths. 



The dating of these early cultures is impossible in an absolute sense, 

 but, relatively, some estimate may be made. The geologists all agree 

 that the lava flow is recent, but their computations of 2,000 to 8,000 

 years are meant to be taken in the geological sense of extreme youth 

 instead of the historical sense of great age. There is some evidence 

 that the Ticoman-Cuicuilco culture is partially contemporaneous 

 with Teotihuacan. It is also possible to compare the accumulations 

 of rubbish at Zacatenco and Ticoman with those of a site in New 

 Mexico, Pecos, the occupation of which is accurately known in years 

 by means of the tree ring method of dating. Dividing the number of 

 years by the greatest depth of continuously deposited debris at Pecos, 

 one gets a ratio of 78 years to the meter. Applying this computation 

 to the deepest refuse heap at Ticoman, one finds 286 years of accumula- 

 tion, and to the thickest middens of the Copilco-Zacatenco culture, 787 

 years. Perhaps a thousand years is excessive, so that computing on 

 the basis of the deepest bed which shows continuous occupation by 

 both cultures, one arrives at nearly 600 years for the total length of 

 habitation. 



Rough and inaccurate as these computations are they indicate that 

 the Valley of Mexico was inhabited for a long time before even the 

 dimmest historical records, and that the earliest remains so far 

 recovered were made in the first centuries before the Christian Era. 

 However, these early people were by no means primitive. Indeed 

 they were on a par already with our modern Pueblo, and there are 

 many stages of culture to be discovered and analyzed before we can 

 say we have traces of the earliest man in Central America. 



