Tamoanchan: The Lost Cradle of Mesoamerican Civilizations

The oldest Nahua legends speak of a mythical place called Tamoanchan, considered to be the cradle of all Mesoamerican civilizations and a sort of terrestrial paradise from which the ancestors of the Aztecs and the Toltecs would go out to repopulate the earth after The Great Flood.

According to the early colonial historian Bernardino de Sahagún (1500-1590 AD), the original inhabitants of Tamoanchan had come from the Sea: “ They say the came to this land to rule over it…they came from the sea on ships, a multitude of them, and landed on the shore of the sea, to the North…from there they went on, seeking the white mountains, the smoky mountains…led by their priests and by the voice of their gods. Finally, they came to the place that they called Tamoanchan…and there they settled .” These learned men invented the sacred books, the count of destiny, the book of years, and the book of dreams. Tamoanchan has been since identified with a number of places in ancient Mexico, including Tula and Teotihuacan, but these are likely later associations from a time when its true location had already become lost and shrouded in legend.