I am a U.S. citizen living in Mexico for 15 years. I am very interested in the history of Mexico, including the history of the cultural interconnections within the territory overlapping what is now Mexico and the U.S. In the U..S., this is the "Southwest", territory seized from Mexico in the so-called "Mexican-American War" of 1846-48 in order for President James K. Polk to achieve his objective of having the United States expand all the way west to California and the Pacific Ocean. Geologically and to indigenous peoples, it is all one land.
To me, this article is very enlightening regarding how the family of "
Uto-Aztecan", or more correctly "Uto-Nahuatl" languages came to be
spread from what is now Central America all the way north to what is now northern Utah. Nahuatl is the indigenous language still
spoken by 1.5 million people in and around Mexico City, the Valley of Mexico and adjacent states.
Previous to this article, I had read nothing about archeological research regarding how and when this language family spread. It is most enlightening to learn that it did not spread via a north-to-south migration but via a south-to-north one and that it was carried out by Stone Age hunter-gatherers, who were later reiinforced by a migration north of corn-growing farmers of the Neolithic period.
The research finding is particularly interesting, since the foundation myths of the Nahua people, including the Mexica (aka Aztecas) who built the "Aztec Empire" conquered by the Spanish in 1521, say that
they originated from a place they call Aztlan, somewhere to the northwwest of the Valley of Mexico. Putting the research together with the myths would point to somewhere near the current northwest coast of Mexico as the origin of the "proto Uto-Azteca" speakers.
Thank you for sharing this research.
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