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Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



not cut it, or transport it from the place of quarrying it to where it 

 was located. By the perfection with which they formed the cir- 

 cles, by the concentric arrangement maintained between them, by 

 the exact division of the parts (of the circumference), by the di- 

 rection of the right lines to the center, and by other particulars 

 which are not used by those who are ignorant of geometry, is 

 manifested the clear knowledge of this science possessed by the 

 Mexicans. 



In regard to astronomy and chronology, similar interpretations 

 derived from this stone, which we are going to explain, will dem- 

 onstrate how familiar they were with observations on the sun and 

 the stars for the measurement of time and its distribution into 

 periods, which had a certain analogy with the movements of the 

 moon, of which they found a "solar-lunar" year, which served to 

 regulate their festivals on certain determined days, so that they 

 could not vary from the times prescribed for their rites more than 

 thirteen days in the prolonged interval of fifty-two years, at the 

 end of which cycle they reformed their civil year. 



The various stories that our old Spanish historians narrated about 

 the magnitude and the material of which the Indians fabricated 

 their false gods, and the prejudices which our first religious men 

 conceived when preaching the Holy Evangelist, in regard to 

 what they saw engraved on stones, or depicted on cloth or paper, 

 as an object of idolatry, occasioned the confusion in which all 

 found themselves, without knowing how to discriminate which 

 were the symbols which belonged purely to the worship of their 

 gods, and which appertained to their histories. 



The latter were regularly engraved upon large stones, and upon 

 the portals of the palaces of their chiefs they depicted the ex- 

 ploits of their ancestors. There was no city or town which did 

 not contain engraved upon the stones of its walls, or on the rocks 

 of its mountains, the year of its foundation, the origin of its name, 

 who were the founders, and the progress made in it — all represented 

 in symbols and characters that none understood but the Indians 

 themselves, without whose aid it was not easy for the Spaniards to 

 comprehend them. As the Spaniards were ignorant of what these 

 figures signified, they demolished many objects belonging to his- 



