It is necessary to exhaust this aspect of the matter, because the fact that the stone embodies Toltec ideas is not irreconcilable with the fact that Mexicans were its constructors. We have said that many reasons exist for maintaining that the Mexicans were a later branch from the same trunk as the Toltecs. If we admit that artificers and astronomers of the time of Axayácatl are the constructors of the relief, it would be desirable to ascertain what circumstance might influence their minds to erect the monument at the time claimed. If it were found to be of especial interest, that in itself would strengthen the conjectures of those who incline to this thesis.
Let us recall the tradition that the ages of the world were measured in exact or very approximate terms by series of 416 years. We do not in any manner, think that the events accommodated themselves to this preoccupation; not we believe that the coincidence having been repeated two or three times with sensible approximation by accident, the natives were deeply impressed, and they themselves so arranged matters as to force the principal events of their history to coincide with the end of the sacred cycles. They undertook peregrinations, founded cities, elected their monarch in special years. There are many testimonies of this, especially in the annals of the Toltecs, a fact which has brought discords to those who could not explain to themselves, for example, that the kings all ruled for 52 years. It was because the public life was subordinated to the astronomico-religious beliefs. Their predilection for the year Ce técpatl was above all manifest: creation of the world, beginning of the Toltec monarchy, exodus from Aztlan, election of Acamapichtli, etc., etc. That people, learned as no other of antiquity, lived dependent upon the movement of the stars, adjusting all their acts to it; tendency, rooted so deeply, that this is really what is read in the stone of the museum: the destiny of the world is developed in periods of 104 and 416 years, directed by the two lords of heaven. Moreover, the tetranary conception ran through the totality of the ideas of the ancient Mexicans, manifesting itself continually, as Mrs. Nuttall's most learned book has demonstrated.
Singular fact, which must have profoundly impressed the imagination of the Mexicans! The Toltecs commencing their era in 5097, year 700 of the vulgar era, one great cycle (416 years) later Tula was destroyed and its inhabitants exterminated or dispersed. The able Clavijero gives to the event the dates of 1052: Brasseur de Bourbourg 1120, placing the death of the queen Xóchitl in 1103; other authors have indicated 1110 or 1070; the Anales de Cuauhtitlan
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