MANUSCRIPTS OF MEXICO SPINDEN 445 



The line of Eight Deer departs from a Lady Ten Crocodile, who 

 may have been the second daughter of Four Crocodile, but on this 

 point the data are uncertain. Her son Thirteen Dog, Eagle Star, 

 married a Lady One Vulture, whose hieroglyph is different from 

 that of the One Vulture recorded as the eldest daughter of Four 

 Crocodile. Their son Five Crocodile is the father of Eight Deer. 

 Henceforward the documentation on relationships is fairly detailed. 

 The epoch of Six ISIonkey and Eight Deer marks the culmination 

 of these nations of southern Mexico. The real difliculty presents 

 itself when we try to carry the record up to the Spanish Conquest. 

 Here my arrangement differs considerably from the partial handling 

 of the historical material by Long. For instance, I identify the 

 Thirteen Dog, Eagle Star, of page 25 of the Zouche codex with 

 the Thirteen Dog, Eagle Star, of page 28, where he makes a second 

 marriage. This identification shortens Long's chronology by 104 

 years. Of course there is always the danger that a seemingly 

 continuous picture series will hark back to a new departure in 



the past. 



THE PROBLEM OF CHRONOLOGY 



I have plotted the genealogies on coordinate paper allowing 10 

 years to the inch in vertical measurement and marking the known 

 dates. On these diagrams I have shown the men in blue lines and 

 the women in red, with the children ranged laterally in connection 

 with each ' couple. The assured sequences and their dependable 

 cross-references cover about three centuries. This circumstance and 

 other considerations have convinced me that the entire recorded 

 history of central and southern Mexico depends upon the innova- 

 tions of Quetzalcoatl and that the chronology must be fitted into 

 the Toltec year count which begins in 1168 with the year 1 Knife 

 (table 1). Quetzalcoatl is given credit for inventing the Mexican 

 calendar and for writing a sacred book taken as the standard for 

 historical and religious uses. It appears that he passed his youth 

 in Yucatan and acquired great efficiency in the ancient astronomical 

 science of the Mayas and great liking for the ceremonial and ethical 

 principles of their religion. Not only did he introduce among his 

 people a cult of the reptilian Storm God of the ancient Mayas under 

 guise of the Plumed Serpent — an innovation which caused a deep 

 schism among the Toltecs, whose religion was largely devoted to 

 human sacrifice — but he also evolved a means for objectively and 

 ideographically recording the elements of time, person, place, etc., 

 which must enter into any record of history. 



