rays and
intermediate water drops recur, and are represented as emanating from the
central Nahui Ollin, the Four in One, which encloses the masked face of
the divine Twain.

A question naturally suggests itself at this juncture: How did the ancient
Mexicans, who utilized the fire-drill in its most elementary form and as
far as is known, employed no means of extracting oil or juice or of
grinding food-stuff by a centrifugal process,(149) come to employ as a
sacred symbol, the axle or "mill-stone" which, in India, had been adopted
as an image of central rotation, by people who constantly used the
fire-drill and the oil-press?

The strongest proof that the idea of a circular disk was associated in
Mexico with terra-cotta spinning whorls only, is the fact that, in the
native description of the Great Temple recorded by Sahagun, a circular
stone monument, employed in religious festivals, which the Spaniards
described as a "stone wheel," is termed in the Nahuatl text as a
"te-malacatl" _i. e._ a "stone whorl." Further evidence of the close
association of such "stone whorls" with thread or cord, the product of
spinning, is furnished by the way in the ritual, that the victim was
attached by one foot to the open centre of the "stone whorl" and
circulated around the stone which lay motionless. On the other hand, the
sculptured zone on the Great Cosmical stone, enclosing the day signs
placed in their fixed order of rotation, and the sculptured frieze on the
Tribute Stone, furnish direct evidence that circular movement was
associated with the cosmical axle, or disk.

It is obvious that the distribution of water combined with fire from a
common central source, represented as a mill-stone, could not have been
suggested to the native mind by the use of the fire-drill and socket and
the spinning whorl only. Therefore we are obliged to face the question
whether the cosmical figure may not have been introduced, as a religious
symbol only, by a race of civilizers who, though acquainted not only with
the oil press and chariot but also with the Akkadian star of Anu, the
combination of the rain and fire crosses, and with the Assyrian-Babylonian
image of Shamash (an elaboration of the same idea), but in the absence of
beasts of burden and sesame seeds in Mexico, had no opportunity, or did
not consider it feasible or necessary, to teach the use of the chariot,
oil-press or circular mill stone to the natives. Before forming any
conclusions or