een found every where, displaying skill and
taste. Idols and sculptures have given us the features and religious
ideas of some nations. Astronomical stones and calendars have been
found, recovered, and lost again, revealing peculiar systems of
astronomy and chronology. We possess the oomplex[TN-16] calendars of the
Tulans, Mexicans, Chiapans, Muyzcas, Peruvians, &c, that of the Talegas
of North America, a dodecagone with one hundred and forty-four parts and
hieroglyphics, was found on the banks of the Ohio, and has since been
lost or hidden.

Humboldt's labors on American astronomy and his results coincide with
those on antiquity to make the American systems quite different from the
oriental, Hindu, Jewish, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Celtic systems of
days, months, zodiac, and cycles; while they are more like those of
Thibet, China, Japan, Lybia, Etruria, &c. At any rate the American
systems were anterior to the admission of the week of seven days, being
the fourth of a lunation, each day dedicated to a planet, and the
Sabatical[TN-17] observance of the Jews based thereon. The American weeks
were of three, five, nine, and even thirteen days, as in some parts of
Asia and Africa, in Java, Thibet, China, Guinea. The week of five days
appears the most ancient of all and the most natural, including exactly
seventy-three weeks in the solar year, and sixty-nine in the lunar year;
that of the three days is only the decimal part of a month; in China the
long week of fifteen days prevails as yet being half a lunation or
month.

Accounts of monuments with dry descriptions and measures, are often
uninteresting, unless with figures and explanations to illustrate their
nature and designs. The writer having himself surveyed many American
sites of ancient cities, may hereafter describe and explain some of
them, with or without figures. He has also collected accounts of similar
monuments all over the earth, and will be able to elucidate thereby our
own monuments. Meantime whoever wishes to become acquainted with such as
have been made known in the United States alone, must consult a host of
writers who have described a few, such as Soto, Charlevoix, Barton,
Belknap, Lewis, Crevecoeur,[TN-18] Clinton, Atwater, Brekenridge,
Nuttal, McCulloh, Bartram, Priest, Beck, Madison, James, Schoolcraft,
Keating, &c.; and in the appendix to the Ancient History of Kentucky
will be found my catalogue made in 1824. Such study in[TN-19] then a task,
a