Topiltzin of Tollan

The sources also describe a man. Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl is remembered as a priest-ruler of Tollan who forbade human sacrifice, taught crafts, and carried the god's name as a title — which is how Mesoamerican rulership worked, and is also why the accounts are so hard to read. Where the ruler ends and the deity begins is not marked in the texts, and colonial writers who wanted a single biography pressed the two together. Archaeology at Tula shows a real city with a real collapse behind the story. It does not show which of the things said about its ruler happened.