﻿Gama on Calendar Stone. 



7 



matters, they insisted that I ought to publish my explanation, and 

 knowing that if I omitted to do so, or to publish the copy (if by 

 any casualty it might be destroyed, or if it should suffer the des- 

 tiny once intended for it, the work would perish, and there would re- 

 main no copy, or notice, of what this great monument contained), 

 the ancient history of Mexico would suffer the same misfortunes 

 which it had suffered for so many years by the loss of former rec- 

 ords, which had been cast into the fire because no one had any 

 appreciation for them, or had been purposely concealed in the 

 earth. 



I determined to publish the description of both stones, in order 

 to contribute information to antiquarian literature, which is so 

 much encouraged in other countries, and that our Catholic mon- 

 arch, Senor Don Carlos III. (whom God preserve!), being King of 

 Naples, promoted by means of the celebrated museum which, 

 with the cost of enormous sums of money, he caused to be founded 

 at Portici, from the excavations he caused to be made in discover- 

 ing the ancient cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried for so 

 many ages under the ashes, stones and lavas of the eruptions of 

 Vesuvius. 



I was impelled also to manifest to the literary world the great 

 knowledge that the Indians of America possessed in arts and sci- 

 ences in the time of their nationality, in order that it should 

 know how falsely they were caluminated by unreasonable or sense- 

 less people, enemies of the Spaniards, with the purpose of sully- 

 ing the glorious exploits achieved in the conquest of these regions. 

 By the narrative of this paper and by the figures it presents to 

 view, will be manifested the dexterity of the artificers who made 

 these works, since they had knowledge neither of iron nor steel, 

 but they engraved with such perfection in hard stones, statues 

 which represented their intended semblances, and made other 

 works in architecture, using in place of tempered chisels and sharp- 

 ened picks stones that were more solid and harder. 



In the second stone were manifested various departments of the 

 science of mathematics, which they knew to perfection. Its vol- 

 ume and weight demonstrated their knowledge of mechanics and 

 machines, without the fundamental principles of which they could 



