Briuton.l ^uO [Oct. G, 



Nahuas and Mayas, the authors above referred to and others 

 have repeatedly overlooked it, and have often been led into ob- 

 viously erroneous interpretations. 



§ 2. Geographic Extension or the Calendar System. 



We know to a certainty that essentially the same Calendar 

 system was in use among the Nahuas of the Valley of Mexico 

 and other tribes of the same linguistic family resident in Tlas- 

 callan and Meztitlan, in Soconusco, Guatemala and Nicaragua ; 

 that it prevailed among the Mixtecs and Zapotecs ; and that of 

 the numerous Mayan tribes, it was familiar to the Mayas proper 

 of Yucatan, the Tzentals and Zotzils of Chiapas, the Quiches 

 and Cakchiquels of Guatemala, and to their ancestors, the build- 

 ers of the ruined cities of Copan and Palenque. 



There is no direct evidence that it had extended to the Huas- 

 tecas, of Maya lineage, on the Rio Panuco ; but it was in vogue 

 among the Totonacos, their neighbors to the south, on the Gulf 

 of Mexico. The Pirindas, Matlazincas and Tarascos of Mich- 

 oacan had also accepted it, though perhaps not in a complete 

 form.* The Chapanecs (Chiapanecs) or Mangues, part of whom 

 lived in Nicaragua and part in Chiapas, had also adopted it. 



The tribes above named belong to seven entirely different lin- 

 guistic stocks, but were not geographically distant. Outside of 

 the area which they occui3ied,no traces of this Calendar system, 

 with its many and salient peculiarities, have been found, either 

 in the New or the Old World. 



The date of this wide dispersion we cannot assign, but we can 

 positively'' say that it was many centuries before the conquest of 

 the country by the Spaniards. We know that in the Mayan ter- 

 ritory the builders of the ancient cities of Palenque in Tabasco, 

 and Copan in Honduras, both of which had been deserted and 

 ruined long before the arrival of Cortes, were familiar with a 

 well-developed form of this Calendar, and with the graphic 

 methods for carrying out its computations. We further know 

 that the migrations of the Nahuas from Central Mexico, to form 

 the colonies of the Pipiles in Guatemala, and of the Nicaraos in 

 Nicaragua, took place after that stock had elaborated their special 



* Oa this point, consult the Anales del Museo Miclwacano, Tome i (1888), p. 85, for a crit. 

 leal exposition of the question, by the Rev. Paso y Troncoso. Also, Orozco y Berra, His- 

 toria Anligua dc Mexico, Tomo ii, p. 144 ct seq. 



