Page:Stone of the Sun.djvu/17

 along paths which León y Gama did not indicate, the thesis of the illustrious author is partly sustained and will always be an important treatise of the subject.

The admirable monolith could not fail to attract the attention of a man like Baron Alexander von Humboldt. He examined it in great detail, being the first to classify its petrographic nature in scientific terms, earlier indicated with fair accuracy by the prolific writer, Don José Antonio Alzate y Ramírez, and finally determined with the precision of modern methods by the distinguished geologist, Don Ezequiel Ordóñez, who refers it to the group of olivine basalts. Humboldt confirmed also the weight which Gama had attributed to the stone by means of ingenious calculations, and reproduced the drawing made by the same scholar, illustrating with it one of the pages of his beautiful Vues des Cordilléres. So far as concerned interpretation, he accepts completely the thesis of León y Gama (as thirty years later did a man of the ability of Albert Gallatin, who also made use of the drawing of our archaeologist), presenting it at length and fully discussing the chronological system of the aborigines and their theony and cosmogony. The vast knowledge of the German writer and his extensive journeys suggested to him various relations between the constructors of the stone, the Asiatics, and peoples of Southern America, an idea fecund in a certain way, but which has brought more ills than advantages to our archaeology, leading many investigators to devote their energies to tracing foreign affinities, instead of studying in themselves the products of the culture of Anahuac.

From that time up to near the end of the nineteenth century, no figure of first rank returned to the attempt of lifting the veil under which was hidden the guarded secret of the famous stone. Set in the lower part of the eastern tower of the basilica, savants and travelers coming from all parts of the world filed before the mysterious reliefs during more than a hundred years, contemplating it some with curiosity, some with wonder, all with admiration. It was there about 1805, when the talented Moxo relates that the common herd diverted itself with battering its figures and designs, although the learned “have not ceased to view it with the greatest astonishment and respect, considering it an original document which testifies to the notable knowledge of astronomy and geometry of the ancient Mexicans.”

There, with permission of Don Lucas Alamán, at the time minister of state, W. Bullock, proprietor of the museum of London, took a mold of it for the first time, which he successfully transported to his