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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



been remodeled by the hand of man until 

 not a trace of natural contour remained. 

 There was a vast system of level courts in- 

 closed by successive terraces and bordered 

 by pyramids on pyramids. Even the sides 

 of the mountain descended in a succession 

 of terraces." But San Juan Teotihuacan, 

 twenty-five miles northeast of the capital, in 

 the magnitude of its remains and in the 

 evidence the site furnishes of population 

 and antiquity, " easily stands at the head of 

 the ancient cities of Mexico. It lacks the 

 well-preserved, sculpture decorated buildings 

 found elsewhere in Mexico and Central 

 America " ; . . . but if the entire mass of 

 the ruined structures of either Chichen, TJx- 

 mal, or Mitla was to be heaped up in a single 

 mound it would hardly surpass the great 

 Pyramid of the Sun alone in bulk, and the 

 whole bulk of the Teotihuacan remains is 

 many times that of its chief pyramid." 



Significance of the Totem. — The Import 

 of the Totem was the subject of a paper 

 read by Miss Alice C. Fletcher before the 

 Anthropological Section of the American 

 Association. The Omahas have two totems, 

 the social and the individual. In the course 

 of the ceremonial attendant upon reaching 

 puberty the young man fasts till he falls 

 into a trance. If he sees or hears anything 

 while in that condition, that becomes the 

 medium through which he obtains super- 

 natural power. He must seek and slay the 

 animal he saw and preserve some part of it. 

 This memento is his totem. Its efficacy is 

 based on the Omaha's belief in the conti- 

 nuity of life, which links the visible to the 

 invisible, binds the living to the dead, and 

 keeps unbroken the thread of life running 

 through all things, making it impossible for 

 the part and the entirety to be dissociated. 

 Thus one man could gain power over another 

 by obtaining a lock of his hair. The totem 

 opens a means of communication between 

 man and the various agencies of his environ- 

 ment, but it can not transcend the power of 

 its particular species ; consequently all to- 

 tems are not equally potent. Men who see 

 the bear are liable to be wounded in battle. 

 Winged forms give the faculty of looking 

 into the future and controlling coming events, 

 while thunder gives ability to control the 

 elements and authority to conduct certain 



religious rites. The simplest form of the 

 social totem is in the religious societies, the 

 structure of which is based upon the group- 

 ing together of men who have received simi- 

 lar visions. Applied to the gens, or tribal 

 body, the object of the totem was to teach 

 the people the knowledge and duties of kin- 

 dred, and one of the most important of 

 these duties was the maintenance of the 

 union of the tribe. The gentile totem gave 

 no immediate hold upon the supernatural, as 

 did the individual totem to its possessor. 

 Outside of certain rites it served solely as a 

 mark of kinship, and its connection with the 

 supernatural was manifest only in its pun- 

 ishment of violations of the taboo. Its in- 

 culcation was that the individual belonged 

 to a definite kinship group, from which he 

 could never sever himself without incurring 

 supernatural punishment. 



The Moon and tbe Sabbath.— The Rev. 



R. J. Floody presented to the American As- 

 sociation the results of ten years' research 

 into the origin of the week and holy day 

 among primitive peoples. He found that 

 they were widespread among the nations of 

 the ancient world from very early times. 

 Each of these peoples is assumed to have 

 independently originated the Sabbath and 

 not to have received it second hand from 

 other tribes. To account for the unanimity 

 in observing this universal custom among so 

 many races, we must look for it3 source in 

 some pheomenon of Nature common to all. 

 The prominence of seven as a sacred number 

 among ancient peoples is due to the moon. 

 Each lunation has four phases or quarters, 

 averaging about seven days apiece. Nature 

 worship was the earliest form of worship 

 among primitive peoples, and the moon took 

 precedence among objects of Nature. When 

 the new phase of the moon appeared, men 

 worshiped it, showing their honor and re- 

 spect by sacrifices and then a feast. They 

 would naturally rest from labor most of the 

 time to give attention to the feasts. Work on 

 the sacred day was considered inauspicious. 

 This early week was the rough and ready 

 reckoning of men devoid of the use of as- 

 tronomical instruments. The holy day was 

 not the seventh day of time, but the seventh 

 day of the moon. The difficulty of getting 

 the exact number of days of the lunar week 



