that the initial character of the epoch among the Mexicans was tochtli; hence técpatl belongs exclusively to the Toltec chronology. There exist presumptions, then, for thinking that the relief condenses the Toltec chronology, reckoning from the chronological reform instituted by that people. Further, remember that in the border of the stone, from whose position it is easy to infer that they refer to past ages, are encountered glyphs corresponding to three ages only, which shows that the face of the monolith is destined to the actual or historic sun, as is reasonable to suppose.
Why then are the ages represented in the figure of the naolin four? If the work were that of the Aztecs, the explanation is very simple: the fourth age beginning in the year 700 of the Christian Era, or 5097, of the Indian chronology, the people of Tenoch would consider it ended with the destruction of Tula, reserving to their own history a fifth sun, which is what Gama, Orozco y Berra, Chavero, and other historians believe. Thus would be explained the fact that the numeral situated below the arrow of the naolin is a little smaller than the others: it represents the fifth age, not yet terminated; therefore it is smaller. We confess that this reading has offered itself to our mind with singular insistence.
Nevertheless, it does not harmonize with the tetranary preoccupation of the natives; and, above all, it is possible for the four figured ages to be explained within the first hypothesis, that is, that the Toltecs have been the constructors of the stone, or even that the Mexicans did not believe that they lived in another than the fourth age. A paragraph from Veytia will give us suggestive light upon the matter, more especially as he speaks precisely of the meeting of the Tula astronomers. He says:
In the city of Huehuetlapallan, famous and numerous population, there came together not only the learned astrologers who were of that city but others who came from the surrounding populations, who, after conferring together at length over the errors which they had recognized in their computations, determined that the duration of the world ought to be divided into four periods or ages, which had to end by the violence of each one of the four elements. The first age, Atonatiuh, from the creation to the Deluge, which they called the Age of Water, Atonatiuh. The second from the Deluge up to the hurricanes in which, by the force of the winds they had suffered the second calamity, and so they called this second age Ehecatonatiuh. The third, in which they were, they said had to come to an end by earthquakes, and so they called it Tlatonatiuh, sun of the
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