[9] Ixtlilxochitl, in his _Relaciones Historicas_, says Topiltzin was the last king of Tula; that Toltec sovereignty extended a thousand leagues from north to south, and eight hundred from east to west; and that in the wars that attended its downfall 5,600,000 persons were slain! [10] According to Dr. Brinton, the name Nahuatl, which of late years scholars have agreed to use in the place of Aztec, does not belong to the latter people. It is an Aztec word meaning--first, to speak clearly; second, to order or command; third, to speak as one with authority. Hence it gained the sense of "astute," "superior," and Nahuatlaca were the Superior People. Dr. Brinton thinks it was another name given by the Aztecs to the dispossessed Mayans, and that as the years passed and the legends of the two races became hopelessly confused, the Aztecs adopted the name themselves. [11] Of Mexican traditions Dr. Brinton (_A Review of the Data for the Study of the Prehistoric Chronology of America_: 1887) says: "It is extremely doubtful if their earliest reminiscences refer to any event outside the narrow valley parcelled out between the petty states of Tenochtitlan, Tezcuco and Tlacopan.... The chronicles of Mexico proper contain no fixed date prior to that of the founding of Tenochtitlan in the year 1325 of our era." CHAPTER XVI WHO WERE AMERICA'S FIRST ARCHITECTS? The proposition that the Mayans were taught to build by foreign visitors involves three postulates. 1. Such foreign visitors came from a land where the knowledge of architecture had reached a considerable degree of perfection. 2. They landed in Central America well within historic times. 3. They belonged to none of the so-called White Races. These postulates very materially narrow the area of the globe in which we can profitably look for their home; and a task which at first sight appears to rival the proverbial one of looking for a needle in a haystack becomes, if approached by the light of common sense, comparatively simple. Common sense cannot be said to have distinguished most of those who have striven heretofore to crack this architectural nut. Broadly speaking, there have been two contending bands of theorists: those who were determined at all costs to claim the architecture of Central America as home-grown; and those who, figuratively speaking, shut their eyes and with a map of the world before them and bodkin in hand, pricked some spot, opened their eyes, and triumphantly declared "There's the place."