Page:Stone of the Sun.djvu/83

 cycle also would be técpatl, which may make clear to us the position mentioned. A value of 52 years being assigned then to each group of these symbols, we obtain the number 1,664, that is to say, 3,328 in all. The butterflies complete the year 4992 already read on the face of the monument. If this is but a coincidence, there could not be one more extraordinary.

Why have not the three ages been represented by the same glyph? One hypothesis occurs to us: Orion or the Pleiades were not selected to mark the new fires until the third age; before that, either they had properly no history and the counting of the earlier epochs was a simply theoretical concept, or they did not attend to the astronomical phenomenon for dividing the cycles.

We may add that Señor Abadiano sees flowers in the figures which we take as Itzpapálotl; in his conception they signify the last of the day signs of the month, which was xóchitl. He gives no attention to the signs of stars (circles with a line across the middle) which make up the butterflies in question. The little stars alternate with técpatl or flint knives, symbol expressive of luminous gleams, sparks, flashings: the glyph unquestionably treats of a constellation.

We have analyzed and discussed the glyphs of the relief, avoiding arbitrary assumptions so far as possible. The majority of our interpretations are supported in important monuments, and among themselves they are found in harmony on the stone, the explanation of which results congruent, complete, and unitary. It could not be otherwise: a monument of such magnitude necessarily responds to a clear and logical thought.

As Beyer has said, many of the principal theories offered do not stand scientific criticism. The central face and the four quadrangles which inclose the symbols of the ages have been satisfactorily explained; there are hypotheses, susceptible of verification, concerning the dates inscribed near to the sun’s face; the fives, the solar glyphs, the pentagons, and the dots of the body of the serpents have been counted, but only of the last does any reasonable explanation exist (Chavero hit the mark very well in the interpretation of the 104 solar glyphs); and nothing or only ambiguous, poetical, and indefinitely general conceptions have been formulated concerning the pentagons, the plumes or flames, the true meaning of the serpents, the heads inclosed in their throats, the groups of four bars, the great numerals of the center of the stone, and the glyphs of the projection of the relief. Also