Page:Stone of the Sun.djvu/42

 To summarize: Repeat the reading of the characters of basalt, combining scrupulousness with analytical rigor, and always the same data will be found: the four ages of the world, the number 4,992 twice placed (in one of which the numbers 1,664 figures), the number 5,096, the 13-ácatl correspondent to the same year, the Ce técpatl, the following year (5097), and the cycles of 104 and 416 solar years indicated in different modes, the dates mentioned being the result of the addition of these same cycles. Simple and highly logical conception!

Translating this into our language and relating it to modern chronology, aided by documents as authoritative as the Anales de Cuauhtitlan and the Relaciones of Ixtlilxóchitl, both natives, we may say: The date 5096 corresponds to the year 699 of the Christian Era; this year was a 13-ácatl, and 1,664 years had passed since 964 when, in their legends, with discrepancies of about nine years, the natives declared the third era of the world began, assigning to it a duration of four cycles of 416 years. The 32 itzpapalotl (obsidian butterflies) of the edge of the relief, each symbolical of a new fire, confirm this assertion. One hundred and four years before the year 4992 of their chronology it is declared that the quinamétzin were destroyed. (Upon the probable origin of these beings consult Hamy, Anthropologie du Mexique; we speak of it also in our Historia de Puebla.) The Toltec savants met together then and discussed the creation of the world, the calamities that had occurred, and the movements of the heavens: this means that the proceeded to the regulation of the calendar, basing it upon the observations of the heavenly bodies. Sahagún says that “the Toltec knew the movement of the heavens and this by the stars.” “Clavijero met with data that suggested something analogous, since he declares that the astronomer Huemántzin, governing Ixtlilcuecháhuac, made the sacred book, the Teoamoxtli, wherein was explained the movement of the heavens, and assigns to the event a date sufficiently near, the year 660. It is the same date that Boturini fixes for the beginning of what he calls the third age. Both authorities agree in the fundamental fact, but the rigorous and most minute chronology of the Anales, recording the dates 674 and 700, is irreproachable; to it we ought to attach ourselves, supported by the double authority of Torquemada and Chavero: that the year 700 was Ce Técpatl is certain. How not to record permanently the account of that reunion in which had been condensed the wisdom, the legends, and even the auguries and predictions of a race which lived ever scrutinizing