Location and Etymology
The Cholula archaeological zone is situated 6.4 kilometres (4 mi) west of the city of Puebla, in the city of Cholula. To be more exact, the pyramid is located in the San Ándres Cholula municipality, and marks the area in the center of the city where this municipality begins. The city is divided into two municipalities called San Ándres and San Pedro. This division originates in the Toltec-Chichimeca conquest of the city in the 12th century. These pushed the former dominant ethnicity of the Olmeca-Xicalanca to the south of the city. These people kept the pyramid as their primary religious center, but the newly dominant Toltec-Chichimecas founded a new temple to Quetzacoatl where the San Gabriel monastery is now.The Toltec-Chichimec people who settled in the area around the 12th century CE named Cholula as Tlachihualtepetl, meaning "artificial hill".
The name cholula has its origin in the ancient Nahuatl word cholollan, which means "place of refuge".
Read more about this topic: Great Pyramid Of Cholula
Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)