identical with those of the relief. Upon the lateral faces of the cube, the four ages are represented with their respective dots, being identical with the symbols of the chronographic stone or relief of the museum.
The fifth age is met nowhere. We must believe that if the aborigines had conceived a fifth sun, the Ollintonatiuh, they would have engraved its figure upon the upper face of the cube: there is no such thing on it. The reality is expressed in the monolith which is called the monolith of Tenanco: four are the ages figured, and the last (here, as in the Codex Fuenleal, is that of water) is not inclosed, as are the others, by means of a band, which demonstrates that they did not consider it as concluded. Also there are seen, joined to each epoch, three great dots and other two smaller that is to say, four larger numerals together: they represent the duration of the four epochs equal in all.
In her most important work (The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations), Mrs. Nuttall, showing in this an analogous mode of thought, maintains that the Mexicans (not the Toltecs) believed that they lived in the fourth age of the world; Dr. Henning,author of profound studies in these particulars, supposing the beginning to be the sun of air, the Ehecatonatiuh, says that at the time of the discovery of America the natives were living precisely in the fourth era—this in his Study of the Date 4-Ahau; Charencey suggests a similar idea in the study Des âges ou soleils aprés la mythologie; the same savant has told us that this belief prevailed among the Cakchiquels, and Dr. Brinton makes us know a similar thing with respect to the chronicles of Chilam Balam, that is to say, with respect to the Mayas.
It is possible, therefore, to read in the relief the expression of the cosmogonic ages, admitting that its constructors believed themselves to belong to the fourth. The great ollin, with the head of Tonatiuh in the middle, alludes not to a fifth era but only to the movement of the orb between the solstices and the equinoxes, as Gama supposed; and the numerals signify the four huehuetiliztli which we have read in them.
The presence of the four ages represented in the asps of the naolin having been explained in a manner sufficiently rational and supported upon respectable historians, the hypothesis that the Toltecs were the authors of the relief remains in the field. And in truth, whoever they may have been, the monument expresses nothing but the history, the
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