Ethno-historic traditions place the founding of Tenayuca in the 12th century AD, when a group of Chichimecs (a word that in Nahuatl means "barbarians") migrated from the north led by their cultural hero and ruler Xolotl. As the tradition goes, they arrived in the valley of Mexico after the fall of Tula, the legendary capital of the Toltecs, and settled down on the west shore of the lake Texcoco, in a place later called Tenayocan, which in Nahuatl means "walled place".
This information partially overlaps with the archaeological evidence, which dates the main development of the site in the Early Postclassic period - although scattered materials have been recovered dating to an earlier, Epiclassic (ca. 600-900 AD), phase.
Scholars have highlighted how the founding of the settlement doesn't necessarily correspond with the first construction of the pyramid, which seems to date to the Early Postclassic, after the fall of Tula and after the Chichimecs of Tenayuca had entered into close contact with the Nahua groups already settled in the valley. For a short period, Tenayuca was a flourishing and important center, possibly thanks to its location near the quarries of good quality construction stone, as well as to the extraction of salt from the saline shoreline of Lake Texcoco.
A bibliography has been collected for this project.
