ds for purposes of their own and how these also served to
carry out certain ideas of organization, controlling persons. Although it
embodied the results of long-standing primitive astronomical observation
and accorded with the seasons and movements of the celestial bodies, the
native Calendar was primarily a governmental institution, designed to
control the actions of human beings and bring their communal life in
accord with the periodical movements of the heavenly bodies.

In my Note on the Ancient Mexican Calendar System, communicated to the
International Congress of Americanists at Stockholm, in 1894, I stated
certain historical and astronomical facts which showed that the New Cycle,
which began in 1507 with the year Acatl, had commenced on March 14th three
days after the vernal equinox and that this delay had obviously been
intentional, in order to wait for the new moon, which fell on March 13th
at 11.40 A. M., and the planet Venus, "which was possibly visible both as
morning and evening star between March 14th and 18th." The above facts,
which have remained unchallenged since their publication, afford an
insight into the astronomical attainments of the sun-priests and moon and
star-priests and show an evident desire to begin a new era at a favorable
time, when there was a conjunction of the heavenly bodies. Thus the terms
of office of the lords of the Above and Below were entered upon and the
machinery of state set into motion, in unison with striking celestial
phenomena. It is impossible not to realize how great must be the antiquity
of a system which, evolving from the rudimentary, ceremonial division of a
tribe into seven parts, as a consequence of its primitive observation of
the Septentriones, developed into a great and complex government dominated
and pervaded by the abstract conceptions of the seven-fold divisions of
the Above, Below, Middle and Four Quarters.

Deferring further comment I will proceed to demonstrate the practical
value, for governmental purposes, of the classification of a community
into twenty divisions with as many representative heads, their
localizations at given points of the compass, and association with a
calendar-sign and day, and will only refer to what I have already
published in my Note on the Calendar, namely, how, by means of the
combination of 13 numerals with the 20 signs, a unit of 260 days was
obtained, and how each sign was combined but once with the same number,
and a perf