The relative littleness of the discrepancies which we mention in itself manifests the effective exactness of the chronology in question. There are those who (Seler, Joyce) in place of the year 700 prefer to assign the initial references of the document of Cuauhtitlan, relative to the Toltecs, to the year 752; the fact that this date is just a bundle of years after the other, united to other testimonies, confirms our opinion that that is the correct one.[1] Ixtlilxóchitl and the Anales of Cuauhtitlan result then on the whole in agreement: the year 700 of the vulgar era is 5097 of the chronology of the Indians.
Here follows a most important passage from Ixtlilxóchitl, which one might almost say was directly deduced from the data of the relief:
. . . . In the year 5097 of the creation of the world, which was Ce técpatl, and 104 from the total destruction of the quinamétzin (giants), there being peace throughout this New World, all the Toltec savants came together, the astorlogers as well as the other arts in Huehuetlapallan, head city of their kingdom, where they treated of many things such as the events and calamities that had happened and the movement of the heavens since the creation of the world.
There leaps to view the allusion to the famous meeting of Toltec astronomers, which certainly did not occur in the remote district of the Gila, as has erroneously been claimed—in any event, there were various of these assemblies—meeting in which was made the reorganizaiton of the calendar. This important reunion took place in the year 5097 from the creation of the world (native chronology), year that was Ce técpatl in its series (commenced with the same name and number).
We have before seen that some event of the greatest importance for that people occurred in the year 700 of the Christian Era, and the synchronological tables (see those of Veytia) tell us without room for error that that year 700 was Ce técpatl. At the same time, the paragraph of the Texcocan chronicler states that the third age of the world ended in 4992, since that 104 years before 5097 the quinamétzin perished; this was the Tlacchitonatiuh, or the sun of the earth (Tlaltonatiuh). So that the Indians considered their third epoch finished in the year 596, and it is to be noticed that three historians, Torquemada, Clavijero, and Veytia, are in harmony regarding this
- ↑ And Seler himself, so learned and well documented generally, studying similar problems affirms (Origenes de las Civilizationes centro-americanas) that the beginning of the Toltec culture and of the system of the tonalámatl, or "the historic sun" for the Indians, dates from an epoch which oscillates about the year 700 A.D.
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