Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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ANCIENT CENTRAL AMERICA AND MEXICO 129 "Smoking Star," "Eagle Star," "Stoned Jaguar," "Blue Dog," "Blooddrinking Eagle," "Jaguar Claw," "Bloody Face"; in women's namus, as for instance, “Plumed Serpent," "Jewelled Parrot," "Sun Fan," and so forth. Historical events were depicted with considerable ingenuity by pictographs which were accompanied by symbols showing the place and the year.
As numbers and dates played a very important part in Mexican writing, I must say a few words about this subject. The numeral system was vigesimal; numbers from 1 to 19 were represented by dots or circles, 20 by a religious banner, 400 (20 x 20) by a pine tree, 3,000 (20 x 20 x 20) by an incense-pouch.
The Mexican calendar was probably derived from the Maya calendar (see below), but it was much simpler than the latter. It was two-fold, and comprised the ritual year (tonalamat!) of 260 days, employed for divination, ceremonial computations and movable feasts, and the solar year of 363 days, consisting of 18 months of 20 days each, cach day having its name and being represented by a pictorial symbol (Fig. 66, 1), followed by a period of 5 days called nemontini or "useless days," which were of very bad omen. In dating, the day-symbols were preceded by the numbers 1-13; and the two sequences run concurrently in unchanging order. The tonalamatl was divided into zo 13-days periods, or weeks. The year was always distinguished by the sign of the day on which it began: there were, however, only four year-signs, and these also were accompanied by the series of numbers 1-13. The period 13 x +(52) years constituted the shorter cycle, and 104 years the longer cycle,
Maya Script The Aztec writing is, as already mentioned, probably nothing but a degenerate derivative of the Maya script; indeed, from the testhetic point of view, there cannot even be a comparison between the beautiful cartouches or "glyphs" of the Maya inscriptions and the crude, barbaric picture-writing of the Aztec manuscripts; there is no likeness even in the external form of the symbols of the two scripts. Nevertheless, while a simple adoption by the Mexicans of the Maya script is not probable, there can hardly be any doubt that the Mexican peoples received the idea of writing at least, from the Mayas. How and when the Mayas invented writing we do not know, and we shall probably never be able to solve this problem.
The three manuscripts (Fig. 66, 2) already mentioned are not the only Maya written material extant; numerous beautiful and mainly wellpreserved stelae (huge, vertical monolithic pillars), carved all over in low relief with glyphs and figures (Fig. 67. 1 and 2), and also large oval stones or altars, similarly carved (Fig. 67, 3), have been discovered in many
