e Inca dominion as it
lies broken and motionless. But endow the giant wheel with motion,
introduce systematical rotation into its every part, regulate the
occupations of the people by a fixed series of work-days and holidays.
Send them forth to their work and collect the products of their labor at
set intervals, _institute a calendar_, and you will have set the machinery
of state in motion and realized how the classification of individuals
according to rank, ages, and occupations was absolutely necessary in order
to obtain a successful and harmonious result. It has already been shown
that the institution of the calendar and establishment of twelve festival
periods of thirty days each, in a year, succeeded the division of the
people into groups and their assignment to fixed places of abode.

"They commenced to count the year in the middle of May, a few days more or
less, on the first day of the Moon ... in this month they held the
festivals of the Sun" (Molina ed. Hakluyt, p. 16). I direct particular
attention to the fact that it was the new May moon which controlled the
beginning of the religious calendar, although the Incas observed the
equinoxes and solstices and the cult of the Sun was under their special
care. The twelve divisions of the year accord with the twelve wards of
Cuzco surrounding the central enclosure which was always the place where
the festivals were held and the people congregated.

I have as yet found no account of the lesser divisions of time in Peru,
but note that the period of thirty days consisted of six periods of five
days each, a subdivision which would obviously accord with native habits
of thought if associated with the six terrestrial directions in space and
if a reunion of people and collection of produce from four quarters took
place on every fifth day in the capital. In my special work on the
Calendar systems of ancient America I shall be able to discuss more fully
their intimate indissoluble relation to the regulation of labor and
control of the food supply absolutely requisite for the great capital.

The idea of rotation was carried out in a ceremony described by Molina.
When the December moon was full, after having ploughed their fields during
twelve days, "all persons returned to Cuzco ... the people went to a house
called moro-uco, near the houses of the Sun and took out a very long cable
which was kept there, woven in four colors, black, white, red and yellow,
at the end of which