HOLMES.] ANCIENT AMERICAN CALENDARS. 279 



facts, and I shall have to leave it to the future or to others to follow- 

 out fully the suggestions here presented. I had expected to find some 

 uniformity in the numbers or ratios of the various zones, circles, and 

 dots, and by that means possibly to have arrived at some conclusion as 

 to their significance. I have already shown that certain elements of 

 the design are fixed in position and number, while others vary, and the 

 following table is presented that these facts may be made apparent. 

 The list is quite incomplete. 



It will be seen by reference to the fourth column that the involute 

 symbol of the inner zone is, with one exception, divided into three 

 parts. The second zone is not given in the table, as it is always plain. 

 The third or dotted zone contains circlets which range from six to nine, 

 while the dots, which have been counted in a few cases only, have a 

 wide range, the total number in some cases reaching three hundred and 

 forty. The bosses of the outer zone range from thirteen to eighteen. 

 The examples in stone seem to have a different series of numbers. 



The student will hardly fail to notice the resemblance of these disks 

 to the calendars or time symbols of Mexico and other southern nations 

 of antiquity. There is, however, no absolute identity with' southern 

 examples. The involute design in the center resembles the Aztec sym- 

 bol of day, but is peculiar in its division into three parts, four being 

 the number almost universally used. The only division into three that 

 I have noticed occurs in the calendar of the Muyscas, in which three 

 days constitute a week. The circlets and bosses of the outer zones 

 gives them a pretty close resemblance to the month and year zones of 

 the southern calendars. 



My suggestion that these objects may be calendar disks will not seem 

 unreasonable when it is remembered that time symbols do very often 

 make their appearance during the early stages of barbarism. They are 

 the result of attempts to fix accurately the divisions of time for the reg- 

 ulation of religious rites, aud among the nations of the south constituted 

 the great body of art. No well-developed calendar is known among the 

 wild tribes of North America, the highest achievements in this line 

 consisting of simple pictographic symbols of the years, but there is no 

 reason why the mound-builders should not have achieved a pretty ac- 

 curate division of time resembling, in its main features, the systems of 

 their southern neighbors. 



