We must now glance briefly at such evidences as we possess of the distinct racial or cultural elements which assisted in the development of Mexican religion. Three such elements appear to be indicated. It would seem that from an early period a people of settled and agricultural habits occupied the Mexican Plateau. These were probably relatively aboriginal to the Toltecs and may have been of Otomi or Tarascan blood, and to them I would refer the original foundation of a rain-cult having Tlaloc as its principal deity. Tlaloc was unquestionably one of the most venerable gods of Mexico, indeed he is the only god who can be identified with certainty in the remains of pre-Nahuan date at Teotihuacan. Tradition spoke of the finding of an ancient idol representing him by the early Chichimec immigrants. [27] At least five of the yearly festivals were celebrated in his honour, and ancient sculptured representations of him have been found in Tarascan territory, in Michoacan, Teotihuacan, Teotitlan, in the Zapotec country and in Guatemala, thus affording irrefragable testimony to his antiquity. Rather later than the culture which probably founded the rain-cult (a religion necessary and indeed inevitable in Mexico) was the Toltec civilization, which regarded Quetzalcoatl as its chiefest divinity, and which probably was brought from the Huaxtec country. But the Toltec are said to have been of Nahua blood, and may have been composed of a Nahua populace and a Huaxtec or proto-Maya aristocracy. The later hordes of Nahua (Chichimecs, Aztecâ, etc.) found these elements already settled upon the land, but brought with them a religion which, if it was destined to have a powerful effect upon the faith of the agricultural folk with whom they came into contact, was also to be quite as strongly influenced by it. Reverting to the conditions prevailing in Mexico prior to the entry of the Chichimec Nahua, we may regard the rain-cult of the Tlaloc religion as in some measure resembling that of the Pueblo Indians of Northern Mexico and Arizona at the present time. The serpentine character of its principal deity, the appeal for rain which composes the basis of most of the prayers to him, provide strong proofs of such a similarity, and, as has been said, the antiquity of the rain religion is proved by the discovery of early sculptured forms and the facts adduced above. The Tlaloc religion had also been able in some degree to retain its own sacrificial customs, the drowning of victims being practised in addition to the Nahua method of slaughter on the stone of sacrifice. The date of the introduction of the religion of Quetzalcoatl is generally placed at the middle of the eighth century of our era, so that we are perhaps justified in assuming that the faith of the greater portion of Anahuac [28] before that time had as its basis the rain-cult, as represented by Tlaloc.