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They had cities and large towns; and dwelling-houses, built of timber and covered with thatch, like those common in England, were scattered over all the rural districts. Some of the cities now found in ruins were then inhabited. This peninsula had been the seat of an important feudal monarchy, which arose probably after the Toltecs overthrew the very ancient kingdom of Xibalba.
Some of the principal seats of the Colhuan civilization were in the region now covered by the great forest. Some investigators have sought to identify the city of Xibalba with the ruined city known to us as Palenque. Brasseur de Bourbourg says: “Palenque appears to have been the same city to which the books give the name of Xibalba;” but this is nothing but conjecture.
In their time the whole was cultivated and filled with inhabitants. Here was a populous and important part of the Colhuan kingdom of “Xibalba,” which, after a long existence, was broken up by the Toltecs, and which had a relation, in time, to the Aztec dominion of Montezuma, much like that of the old monarchy of Egypt to the kingdom of the Ptolemies.
The Colhuas are connected with vague references to a long and important period in the history previous to the Toltec ages. They seem to have been, in some respects, more advanced in civilization than the Toltecs. What is said of events in their history relates chiefly to their great city called Xibalba, the capital of an important kingdom to which this name was given.
The division was made 2513 years previous to 1558 A.D., or in 955 B.C. If this date could be accepted as authentic, it would follow that the Nahuas or Toltecs left Huehue-Tlapalan more than a thousand years previous to the Christian era, for they dwelt a long time in the country of Xibalba as peaceable settlers before they organized the civil war which raised them to power.
We may as reasonably suppose Copan, Quirigua, or some other old ruin, to have been Xibalba. Those who attempt to believe this old American civilization was brought across the Atlantic by the Phœnicians in very remote times, assume, against the plain testimony of the monuments, that the Colhuas came to America from some country on the Mediterranean.
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