Viewing page 9 of 42

00:17:55
00:20:14
00:17:55
Playback Speed: 100%

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:17:55]
{SPEAKER name="Gordon Ekholm"}
Beginnings, Valiant had just done his work in the Valley of Mexico and for the first time we had a, we had a uh, a long sequence in one area that is from the preclassic, early preclassic, up through the - to the time of the conquest.

[00:18:11]
This had gradually been built up through the work of Damiel and [[Nopiera ?]] and Boess of course, at an earlier time.

[00:18:23]
We had absolutely no idea of Mesoamerica, that is 'Mesoamerica' came later, that is, a unit of culture including the Maya and - and uh some, some from Mexico.

[00:18:42]
Actually, much later came the - the correlations between the cultures of Central Mexico and the, and the Maya area.

[00:18:57]
I shouldn't say much later, it came in the - it came in the early '40s, when uh, when the Mexican archaeologists began to get interested in the Tula and there was a meeting on Tula in the, at that time and that's a meeting of a round table meeting of the Society of Mexican archaeology, of Mexican Anthropology.

[00:19:24]
And for the first time, it was realized that the relationships between Chichen Itza and Central Mexico, or that is the Itzas, who supposedly came out of the Mexico and developed Chichen Itza, were from Tula and not from Teotihuacan.

[00:19:41]
There had been no, when I was in uh doing graduate work in Tozzer's courses, we talked a great deal about Chichen Itza and the Toltecs, but we always thought of the Toltecs as Teotihuacan, and there was actually no evidence of relationship between the two areas because Teotihuacan was quite a bit earlier, quite a bit earlier.

[00:20:06]
And all of a sudden with this Tula conference, the thing became clear: Tula was late, just pre-Aztec, and later than Chichen Itza.