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Aztlan - The Search for The Aztec Homeland
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The mythical homeland of Mexico's Aztecs -- an island known as Aztlan -- has eluded historians for centuries, and the quest to find it has become shrouded in political spin and scholarly speculation. Like the lost Atlantis and Camelot, Aztlan may or may not have existed, but fervent believers have sought it from a mangrove swamp in western Mexico to the desert of Utah.
Academics agree that the Aztecs wandered the badlands of central Mexico for years before founding what is now Mexico City around 1325 and then forging the greatest empire of the ancient Americas. But the original habitat of the people whose history and symbols are still invoked by modern Mexico remains a mystery. Aztec legend says little about Aztlan, apart from that it was a small island on a lake inhabited by herons north of Mexico City. If it is ever found, archeologists do not expect to discover much in the way of treasure or ruins there. Mexcaltitan, a small marshy island in a mangrove swamp and currently home to 1,800 people, was first tapped as Aztlan by a 19th century Mexican historian and given credence by National Geographic magazine in a 1968 article. Mexcaltitan's tiny museum houses some pre-Hispanic pottery but no evidence that it was the place from where the Aztecs took their first step into the history books, and it is now losing ground to U.S. claims to be the Aztecs' homeland. "No serious archeological study has ever been done in Mexcaltitan," said Jesus Jauregui, an expert in western Mexico at the National Institute of Anthropology and History. "Aztlan is a mythical place, not a historical one." Try telling that to the growing number of Mexican immigrants in the United States for whom the idea that Aztlan was in Utah or Colorado has become a matter of doctrine! "Mexican Americans are very interested in it because it gives them identity as an ethnic group," said Armando Solorzano, ethnic studies professor at the University of Utah. He said that if the Aztecs indeed came from what is now the western United States, as some linguistic studies suggest, then the millions of mostly illegal Mexican migrants there could argue that they are not just undocumented workers but descendants of the original inhabitants who have come home. "With this massive wave of immigration from Mexico now, the immigrants are saying, 'We are returning to Aztlan,' so there is a lot of political misunderstanding and conflict," Solorzano said. Perhaps the best clue to the origins of the Aztecs is the language. The Aztec tongue is widely recognized by linguists as being part of the Uto-Aztecan family and related to the language of the Ute Indians of Utah as well as the Hopi and Comanche. The discovery in recent years of a cave painting in Sego Canyon, Utah that appears to be a deity also seen on a famous Aztec stone calendar boosts the theory of a former Aztec presence in the United States, Solorzano said. Seven caves found on Antelope Island in Utah may also tie in with an Aztec story that the tribe passed through a place of seven caves, the fabled Chicomoztoc. But all this does not prove that Aztlan was in the southwest United States, only that the Aztecs may have spent time there on their wanderings before departing for Mexico City some 1,700 miles to the south. Although Utah and are two of the main theories, some people say the Aztecs migrated from California or Florida. [based on info from a Reuters news report] |
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