330 



BUKEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[BULL. 28 



marginal notes to that text, which, however, were evidently the work 

 of some later hand. And the same thing has been affirmed recently by 

 the Yucatec archeologist, Pio Perez, with great positiveness. I pointed 

 out years ago" that from the way in which the katuns were named and 

 reckoned, that is, designated by the clniracter for the day Ahau and 

 a numeral Avhich seems to be decreased in each successive katun by the 

 value of 2— as 13, 11, 9, 7, 5, 3, 1 ; 12. 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 Ahau— the conclu- 

 sion is to be drawn that the length of the katun was neither 20 nor 2-1 

 solar years, but 20X3()0 days, a period of time actually used by the 

 INIayas in reckoning, as clearly follows from the numeric characters 

 in the Dresden manuscript with which Fcirstemann first acquainted 

 us. It is merely a lack of exactness on the part of the old writers 

 when they speak of 20 years instead of 20X360 days. The more 

 recent theory that the length of the katun was 24 j^ears clearly arose 

 from the fact that the first days of the period of 2-1 years received 

 the same designation as those of the periods of 7,200 days. 



On the basis of a passage in the book of Chilam Balam of Mani, 

 which gives the beginning of the katun, 5 Ahau, as the 17th day of 

 the month Zac in the year 13 Kan, or A. D. 1593, I have reckoned 

 the first davs of the katuns as follows: '' 



Anyone who has ever taken the trouble to collect the dates in old 

 Mexican history from the various sources must speedily have dis- 

 covered that the chronology is very much awry, that it is almost hope- 

 less to look for an exact chronology. The date of the fall of Mexico 

 is definitely fixed according to both the Indian and the Christian 

 chronology, and this one fixed date makes it possible to harmonize, 

 with approximate certainty at least, the two calendric systems:'^ 

 but in regard to all that jjrecedes this date, even to events tolerably 

 near the time of the Spanish conquest, the statements differ widely. 

 The chronology of the books of Chilam Balam is as bad or worse. In 

 the first place, the list of traditional events is exceedingly meager; 

 then, but few dates can be relied on with any degree of confidence. 

 In most cases the arrangement of the entire statement shoAvs that 



« Zeitsohrift fiir Ethnolonie (1801), v. 23, p. 112. 



''In an essay reail l>efore tlie Berlin Anthi-opoloiiic Society in .Tune, 189."). 



•■ See Erliiuterungen zu den Bilderhaudschriften Alexander von Ilnuiboldts. Berlin, 1893. 



