Abstract
THE NATIVE CALENDAR Of CENTRAL. AMERICA AND MEXICO.—The native races of Mexico and Central America used a calendar differing completely from those employed by the ancient natios of the Old World to reckon time. Many explanations of the origin of the calendar have been suggested, some referring it to series of recurring events in nature, others to astronomical phenomena, while a third section of inquirers regard it as purely mythical and terrestrial. Dr. D. G. Brinton has lately studied the peculiar calendar from the point of view of linguistics and symbolism, and his results are given in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. xxxi.p. 258, 1893. As the calendar system investigated is not widely known on this side of the Atlantic, it may be well to give an outline of it. “The basis is a so called ‘month’ of twenty days. Each day is designated by a name of some object, animate or inanimate, and besides its name, each day is numbered, but not from one to twenty, but only from one to thirteen, when the numbering begins again at the unit. The result of this combination evidently is, that a day bearing both the same and the same number will not recur until thirteen of the ‘months’ have elapsed. This gives a period or cycle of 260 days, and this anomalous period is at the foundation of the native calendar. “Dr. Brinton's linguistic analysis of the names of the twenty days in the Maya, Tienlal, and Quiche Cakchiqueldialects, and in the Zapotec and Nahuatl languages, shows that they are all identical in signification, and thtrefore must have bad one and the same origin. By arranging the symbols represented by the names in order irom one to twenty, it is found that they exhibit a sequence covering the career of human life, from the time of birth until death at an old age. Thus, in all the five languages and dialects, the name of the first day signified birth or beginning, that of tbc tenth day, success (through hardship and suffering); of the eleventh, dificulties submounted; of the thirteenth, advancing years; of the eighteenth, war and death; of lhe twentieth, the sun, or house of the soal. It appears, therefore, that the calendar conveyed a philosophical conception of life; which may or may not, however, have originated contemporaneously with it. The period of twenty days was doubtless derived from the vigesimal system of counting in use among the tribes employing the calendar. This number 20 is based on finger and too counting, and Dr. Brinton points out that in the languages Investigated his name has the signification “completed” or “filled up.” “In this way,” he thinks, “the number came to represent Symbolically the whole of man, his complete nature and destiny, and mystically to shadow forth and embody all the unseen potenesis which make or mar his fortunes and his life.” Each of the twenty signs in the primitive calendar had 13 numbers, and also 13 names, or rather 13 varieties of the same name. Apparently the ancient secrs of Mexico and Central America believed that by assigning thirteen modes of activity to each of the twenty headings under which the agencies that influence human life were arranged, they had taken into account the thirteen possible relations of each to both the material and immaterial worlds; and the fact that the result of 20 ×13 days is 260 days or approximately nine months, that is, the period from conception to birth, would, according to Dr. Brinton, have appeared to confirm the mystic potenesis of these cardinal numbers. But whatever theory is accepted to account for the adoption of the factor 13, there is little doubt that this period was posterior and secondary to the 20 day period.
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Our Astronomical Column. Nature 50, 206 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/050206a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/050206a0