MAYA 

 THOMAS 



] THE ORIGIN OP CALENDARS. 



and mauy of these have beeu reproduced by photography aud other 

 methods, notably in the excellent drawings by Catherwood. Many of 

 the mural records remain to be transcribed by future students, though 

 they are rapidly disappearing under the inllueuce of a torrid climate 

 and the neglect of an inai)preciative population; but these various data 

 for the history of one of the most remarkable peoples of the Western 

 Hemisphere have not been finally systemized. The works of Kings- 

 borough and Catherwood, of Berendt and Brinton, of Thomas, Seler, 

 aud Forstemann, and of other students of the Maya are, however, 

 uoteworthy and important. 



III. 



The most primitive peoples take note of days, or rather of the nights 

 by which activity is arrested; and in this recognition of a natural 

 alternation of events, calendars and chronologic systems take root. 

 Most primitive peoples, too, like many of the loAver animals, take note 

 of the march of the seasons; and some savage races reckon time rudely 

 by summers, or perliaps rather by winters, during which the activity of 

 the year is arrested. The recognition of these diurnal and annual 

 periods gives rise to solar calendars, though no cases are known in 

 whicli the solar calendar has become an important element in chro- 

 nology except in conjunction witli other elements. 



Many savages, and probably all barbarous peoples, take note of the 

 phases of the moon, and some of them reckon time by moons, although, 

 as in the solar reckoning, it is commonly the dark or change of the moon 

 that fixes the time unit. These lunations form the basis for lunar cal- 

 endars; but no cases are known in which a lunar calendar alone has 

 determined a comi^lete chronologic system. 



A day measures the rotation and a year the revolution of the earth; 

 and while the periods are not commensurable, the discrepancy (some- 

 thing less than a quarter of a day) is so slight as to escape attention 

 save in the higher stages or under peculiar couditions of barbarism, or 

 in civilization. A lunation measures the revolution of the moon, and 

 this cycle is not commensurable Avith either of the terrestrial move- 

 ments; yet the earth, sun, and moon are so related in space and in 

 movement that eclipses occasionally occur, and the eclipse, being a 

 striking phenomenon and one mysterious to the i)rimitive mind, gives 

 another basis for time reckoning, and from this basis lunisolar calen- 

 dars have sprung in different countries; and most important calendars 

 forming the warj) of the chronology of the world are of this character. 

 The ancient Chaldeans and the Chinese and the astronomers of ancient 

 Greece carried observation of eclipse cycles to high i^erfection, and the 

 Chaldean saros of eighteen years, the Chinese tchang and Crecian 

 Metonic cycle of nineteen years, the Grecian Callippic cycle (known long 

 before in China) extending over seventy-six years, the Chaldean naros 

 of six hundred years, and perhaps also the Chinese Great Year, com- 



