30 COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 



earliest Spanish writers, the Totonacos claimed to be the builders of the 

 great pyramids of the sun and moon which are such striking monu 

 ments on the sacred plain of Teotihuacan. 



Several specimens were displayed of the so-called &quot; sacrificial yokes,&quot; 

 made of carved stone, highly polished, whose use has been the subject 

 of large discussion. They were supposed at first to have been intended 

 to fasten the human victim to the sacrificial stone at the time his heart 

 was cut out and offered to the gods. Others have believed them to be 

 heavy ceremonial ornaments or insignia, or objects intended to be 

 worn on state occasions by high dignitaries or priests. Another and 

 recent theory of their use has been that they represent symbolically 

 the creative forces of nature, and they have therefore been brought 

 into relation with the crescent and the semicircle in the symbolism of 

 the Old World. A more practical use which has been suggested for 

 them is that they were intended to form the aperture through which, 

 in the favorite game of ball of the Mexicans, the ball had to be 

 thrown in order to win the game. This last-mentioned theory seems 

 the more probable, as they are not all yokes that is to say, some are 

 opened at one end and some are closed, thus bringing them into a form 

 closely resembling that of the acknowledged stone aperture for the 

 ball shown 1 at Tula and other places in ancient Mexico. Although 

 vaguely similar to the stone yokes which have been found in consider 

 able numbers in some islands of the West Indies, they do not, like 

 these, present a formation of rights and lefts so as to be worn on one or 

 the other shoulder, but the two arms of the yoke are always the same. 



Other objects from the same locality, presented in numerous speci 

 mens, are the small double cups of terra cotta, the hollow in each 

 being a little larger than that which would hold the tip of the finger. 

 It has been a standing puzzle to explain the purpose of these curious 

 articles, specimens of which are common in all collections of Mexican 

 antiquities. It has been suggested that they were intended to hold 

 some votive offerings to the gods, while others have maintained that 

 they were incense burners. 



The collection also offered a number of objects in stone having 

 handles rudely resembling in shape a flatiron with equal ends. These 

 were labeled as grinding stones used for the purpose of rubbing the 

 meal into a finer consistency. Some of them, instead of a handle, pre 

 sented a pointed protuberance by which they could be grasped and 

 moved to and fro over the smooth surface of a large corn-grinding 

 stone. In a few instances this protuberance had a three-cornered or 

 cocked-hat appearance, which is seen so clearly in a number of stone 

 implements of the same general shape from the West India Islands. 

 The latter have been generally regarded as ceremonial objects, but 

 appearances, in some instances at least, favor the view that they were 

 intended for nothing more than rubbing stones. 



1 See Chariiay, Les Auciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde, p. 73 



