Ancient Linear Measures. 227 



Ohio mound works, 30 inches was about the length, or was one 

 of the multiples of the metrical standard employed. For various 

 reasons it may even be doubted whether any small unit, or too 

 strictly scientific method, will be found to give uniform satisfac- 

 tory results for these mound measures of North America. The 

 mere circumference or diameter must necessarily have varied with 

 the height, as far as mere mounds were concerned, which ranged 

 from 10 to 100 feet; it is not unlikely, too, that, in constructing 

 their enclosed "sacred" area«, they may not have sometimes 

 intended to construct a circle, say, to measure to a certain square 

 area, or the reverse, in which case too much importance should 

 not be attached to the circumstance that a circle diameter of 

 exactly 1,050 feet should = 1,000 of Mr. Petrie's unit, on which 

 he lays much stress, and which, according to my scale of 12 to 10 

 would show 1,300 feet — a less likely round number perhaps. There 

 are, however, no fewer than eiizht cases, where no equal squares 

 are in question, given by Squier and Davis as having the diameter 

 of 250 feet, which would give exactly 300 of my mound feet, and 

 a much more likely number than Mr. Petrie's unit would give, 

 viz., 240. Quite probably, too, all North American mound mea- 

 sures cannot be dealt with by one unit of measure only. Those 

 in the lower Mississippi Valley may be found, perhaps, to give more 

 purely Mexican measures. The pyramid of Teotihuacan has a 

 gallery of 157 feet long — 160 feet, springing from a height from 

 base of 69 feet = 70-71 feet. That of Cholula, of 1,450 feet 

 square, would give 1,500, and that of Sonora of 4,350 feet exactly 

 = 4,500, according to Solon's foot unit. 



I purpose to examine more thoroughly Mr. Petrie's units of 

 6 - 76 and 10*65 as applied to Mexican and Central American mea- 

 sures. Of those from Peru, Copan, and Palenque, I think that 

 there Mr. Petrie's units may be the best. For Aztec Mexico 

 itself, I do not find that they suit so well as Solon's foot of 11.70. 

 The body of the great temple at Tiahuanaco, in Peru, is given by 

 Squier as 388 x 445, which, with 2 or 3 per cent, added, would 

 give 400 x 450. A circular stone building near Cuzco, in Peru, 

 of 24 feet internal diameter, and one in Central America of 48 

 English feet, look very like 25 and 50 feet, by my Mexican mea- 

 surement. 



Dr. Brinton also states that Senor Almarez, in 1864, specially 



