The Lost History of the Aztecs

Central Precinct of Aztec capital city, Tenochtitlan. Attributed to Diego Rivera, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

What you’re about to read represents the results of a multiyear research project involving linguistics, indigenous history, archaeology, and genetics. For the technical justification for these conclusions, see the footnotes throughout.

Fast-Forward

The mainstream view2 of the Aztecs has held that 15,000 years ago, ancestors of the Aztecs migrated from Central Asia across the Bering Strait, rapidly dispersed throughout the Americas, and then . . . well, what? What happened?

According to mainstream science, more than 11,000 years passed with little more than hunting and gathering. No civilization. Nothing to write home about.

And then, in AD 1325, the Aztecs founded the city of Tenochtitlan.

Of course, I’ve skipped all the parts that preceded the Aztec ascent. The Olmec rise and fall, the Mayan rise and fall, the rise and fall of Teotihuacan—the greatest city in all of the pre-European Americas—another Mayan rise and fall, the Toltecs come and go, and then, finally, the Aztecs.

But what do these earlier civilizations matter? If all Native Americans descended from a single migration in the incomprehensibly distant past and if nothing happened for most of that impossibly long era, what significance do these earlier civilizations hold in explaining the rise of the Aztecs?

In short, the story I’ve just told you has been upended by recent research. And it reveals multiple links with civilizations of the Old World, links that explain why certain peoples succeeded and others failed.

A New Story

I have been working for several years on the male-inherited Y chromosome DNA.3 I have been following it backward in time, from the dramatic era of the post-Columbian population collapse to the periods of the original links with the Old World.

Just this month, I made a major breakthrough4 with another type of DNA: the female-inherited mitochondrial DNA. The histories revealed by mitochondrial DNA, along with the histories contained in Y chromosome DNA, are, well, gripping. Especially for Mesoamerica and for the period preceding the Aztecs—which casts Mesoamerica’s last pre-Columbian empire in a brand-new light.

New Drama

Who did the earliest major group of Americans descend from? Were these ancestors the same as the ancestors of the Aztecs? Archaeology puts the first cradle of civilization on the gulf coast of Mexico in the second millennium BC.5 The Olmecs, builders of the famous giant sculpted heads, birthed it. By the 400s BC, they were gone.6

Olmec giant sculpted head

The Olmecs have no Y chromosome echo, nor do they have any mitochondrial DNA signature. Their origins are a mystery.

The Olmecs have no Y chromosome echo, nor do they have any mitochondrial DNA signature.

In the Guatemalan lowlands, Preclassic Mayan civilization7 was on the rise before the Olmecs disappeared. The Preclassic Mayan era then ended suddenly in the AD 100s. The Classic Mayan era commenced around AD 250. And then, in the AD 700s–1000s, the great lowland Mayan cities emptied, their kings stopped inscribing their histories, and the civilization collapsed, for reasons unknown—one of the great unsolved mysteries of our day.

Mayan ruins

But the origins of the Maya are not. Female-inherited mitochondrial DNA traces a migration from northeast Asia into the Americas around 1000 BC—exactly when the lowland Mayan civilization began to flourish.8

Which means that the Olmecs had to contend with a group of invaders in their own backyard. It seems that the Maya ultimately got the upper hand. Again, no Olmec Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA lineages have been detected among modern indigenous Americans.

In the 100s BC, after the Preclassic Maya had already begun to flourish, the great Mexican city of Teotihuacan accelerated the pace of its growth.9 At its peak, in the centuries after Christ, Teotihuacan achieved a population size of up to 200,000 people. In the Maya lowlands, there are hints that Teotihuacan conquered and ruled parts of the Classic Mayan domains.10 Then, in the AD 600s, a couple of centuries before the Classic Maya began to collapse, Teotihuacan was violently overthrown.11

Mexican ruins at Teotihuacan

In the 100s BC, exactly when archaeology identifies a new growth phase at Teotihuacan, mitochondrial DNA traces another migration from northeast Asia into the Americas.12 Now the Maya had invaders in their backyard.

It seems that Teotihuacan got the best of the Maya. Only 15% of modern Maya belong to the original Mayan mitochondrial DNA lineage. A whopping 75% of modern Maya belong to the mitochondrial DNA lineage of Teotihuacan.13

The Olmecs weren’t the only people with missing DNA. For all three of these ancient civilizations—the Olmecs, Maya, and Teotihuacanos—their Y chromosome lineages have vanished. The oldest Y chromosome lineage in the Americas dates to just before the fall of Teotihuacan.14 The dispersal of this lineage coincides exactly with when Teotihuacan was burned. Even this city—and possibly the Mayan cities as well—succumbed to a new round of invaders from Asia.

In the aftermath of both the Classic Maya and of Teotihuacan, around the AD 900s, relatives of the Aztecs ascended to power. The Toltecs,15 whom the Aztecs recalled with great fondness, advanced on Central Mexico and may have even ruled the remnants of the Maya on the Yucatán peninsula. By AD 1200, the Toltecs were finished. Then, in AD 1325, the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan.

But the Aztecs’ own history, the Codex Chimalpopoca,16 puts the start of Aztec history much earlier—in AD 635. Thus, it turns out that the beginning of the Aztec story . . . dates precisely to the arrival of the last invaders of Mesoamerica. In other words, the ancestors of the Aztecs arrived at just the right time to avoid the tragic fates of the Olmec, Maya, and Teotihuacanos.

New Significance

There’s another side to the Aztecs’ story of arrival, migration, and conquest. Genetics adds an unexpected exclamation point to this late chapter in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican history.

How important was Mesoamerica with respect to the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere? Other fields besides genetics have hinted that Mesoamerica occupied a prominent position. For example, the indigenous histories of some of the peoples north of the Rio Grande, like the Natchez, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek, describe ancestral links between North American tribes and Mesoamerican ones. In the field of archaeology, nowhere else but Central America do you find such magnificent sites. There’s nothing else in the ancient pre-European Americas that matches the glory of the Olmec, Mayan, and Teotihuacano ruins.

And genetics? Recent DNA discoveries take these hints to a whole new level. Again, mitochondrial DNA from two of the pre-Aztec peoples—the Maya and Teotihuacanos—didn’t disappear. These DNA lineages persist to this day. But they didn’t remain only in Mesoamerica. They spread out. From nearly pole to pole! Today, Native Arctic peoples belong to the mitochondrial lineage of the Teotihuacanos.17 Indigenous peoples of Chile and Argentina include the Mayan mitochondrial DNA lineage.18 In other words, in the pre-Columbian world, genetics fingers Mesoamerica, not just as prominent, but as preeminent.

Which means that, when the Aztecs rose to the throne of Mexico at Tenochtitlan and became the most dominant power in Mesoamerica, they arose to the highest of heights in the entire Western Hemisphere.

Creationists for the Win

This new paradigm for the Aztec story is the result of something groundbreaking and revolutionary: Young-earth creationists doing science.

This new paradigm for the Aztec story is the result of something groundbreaking and revolutionary: Young-earth creationists doing science. According to federal and Supreme Court decisions from the 1980s—decisions that still keep creation science out of public school classrooms—creationists don’t do science.19 But the story you’ve just read is the result of a process of making hypotheses, of testing these hypotheses, and of following the evidence where it leads.20 These lingering—but powerful—court claims don’t hold water.

Which means that the origins debate is in a whole new era.