Mysterious ancestral home of the Aztec?

Question:

Mysterious ancestral home of the Aztec?

The Aztec arrived in the Valley of Mexico approximately a century before Cortez landed. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a Cortez lieutenant recorded this as information received by neighboring tribes. ??In the time of my grandfather they came in great numbers from the North.??

Obviously the Aztec brought complex tribal organization. A century??s not sufficient time to develop a cultural phenomenon of the magnitude encountered by the Spaniards.

That should have left an obvious hole somewhere. But the only large population to the north that did a vanishing act during the proper time frame was the Chacoan/Mogollon cultures of the southwestern US.

Scholars once accepted as a given the seemingly obvious Aztec/Chacoan connection. Aztec, New Mexico, site of a Chacoan ruin, commemorates that once-held certainty.

If the Chacoan/Mogollon weren't the ancestors of the Aztec, who's the next candidate for the job?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: The Olmec.