27
predecessors by innovations, if only of a formal character. Such changes we also observe among the Nahuatls in Anahuac. The period of 52 years, however, seems to have constantly prevailed among them, and also the divisions of the 365 days into 18 months of 20 days each.
We find, for instance, that one of the Nalmatl tribes begins its annals with December 9, another selects December 26, another January 9, and others January 12,. February 4, and February 22. We also know that a different calculation prevailed among these tribes in beginning their annals. The State of Colhuacan began its chronology with a year 1 Calli, the State of Mexico with 2 Acatl, others with 1 Tochtli, and seemingly the most ancient calculation began with the year 1 Tecpatl. Thus we have a historical basis for our assertion that the Nahuatl as well as the Maya tribes did not conform to a uniform rule in beginning their first year's date, in their chronological epochs, or in the division of their cyclical epochs.
In spite of this diversity, so perplexing to modern chronologists, the Aztecs and the Mayas were both governed by the same general principle in arranging their calendars. Both nations recognized the fact that in the past their solar year had numbered only 360 days; and they preserved in the words nemotemi and xona-kaba-kin, the remembrance of a not to be forgotten effort exerted by their ancestors to correct the primordial solar year of 360 days into one of 365 days. Both nations conscientiously kept on dividing the year into 18 months, and each of the months into 20 days, and with both the number 13 returns as a basis governing the calendar of years as well as that of periods.[1]
We notice, moreover, that both nations omit to count the 20 days of the month in the succession of the figures 1–20,
- ↑ Senor Orozco y Berra, the learned and laborious author of the "Carta ethnograflca de Mexico, Mexico, 1864," has made this matter a subject of special investigation in "Anales del Museo Nacional de Mexico," 1879, Tom. I., Entrega 7, page 305.
