page_30 < previous page page_30 next page > Page 30 and TeotihuacÃÄ„n traces are found in Guatemala, also visited by Aztec merchants coming from the nearby Aztec province of Soconusco. If Toltec expansion was elsewhere on a smaller scale, they, unlike the other three, left their mark on the peninsula of YucatÃÄ„n. But while the radius of action in each case was thus comparable, the methods more probably varied. Some scholars write of a TeotihuacÃÄ„n military presence, say, in Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala; among other factors, however, the more limited manpower at their disposal makes it seem likely that in Olmec and TeotihuacÃÄ„n times cultural penetration was achieved more by traders than by soldiers. In the absence of concrete evidence to that effect, to talk of a TeotihuacÃÄ„n ''empire" in the same terms as the Aztec Empire (whose military conquests are well documented) is simply to add yet another modern fable to the Mesoamericans' own myths concerning their past. While Tula was a more immediate reality as the former Tollan, never wholly absent from the Aztec mind was a feeling of veneration for TeotihuacÃÄ„n, where, according to legend, their own, or fifth, sun had been created. Sahagún's description of the migration of those who fled from the stricken metropolis establishes a physical contact between Tula and TeotihuacÃÄ„n in Aztec thought, since the last people to leave TeotihuacÃÄ„n, described as "Nahuas," were a group that specifically included the Mexicas and that went, among other places, to Tula. 35 Certain other aspects of Sahagún's account, moreover, couple the legends of both former capitals: the wise men who went east from TeotihuacÃÄ„n are said to have followed their lord and master, Tloque Nahuaque, Yohualli Ehécatl; this deity, according to Sahagún, is more to be identified with Tezcatlipoca, but as Ehécatl, god of wind, is also indivisible from Quetzalcoatl, the divine hero who fled eastwards some four centuries later when Tula was about to collapse. A more specific example may be cited of an identical story applied to both the fall of TeotihuacÃÄ„n and to that of Tula. Sahagún also relates that when the Huaxtecs abandoned the land, (that is, TeotihuacÃÄ„n), their ruler became drunk with pulque in precisely the same way as did Topiltzin when tempted by Tezcatlipoca just before he finally abandoned Tula.36 The legend of the deity or of the inebriated chief who leaves the doomed city and flees eastward thus relates both to TeotihuacÃÄ„n and to Tula. The archeological proof of disaster is more convincing  < previous page page_30 next page >