522 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
sponding days, Tochtli, Acatl, Tecpatl, and Calli; but true to their Maya traditions 
and to their conception of time as a thing of elapsed units, they gave these first days 
of the year the month-coefficient 0, as they had always done from time immemorial. ‘This 
would explain the difference of one day in the positions of the days in the months 
between the Old Empire and the late New Empire, 1. ¢., the Toltec Period (see page 
505), but it does not explain why the second shift in the year-bearers took place, 
since the Lamat, Ben, Eznab, and Akbal group already agreed with the year-bearers 
of the conquerors. 
This second change may have come about shortly after the month-positions 
were changed, and may have been due to the inability of the Maya to maintain 
intact their conception of time as a succession of elapsed units, in the face of a strong 
element in their midst which looked upon time as a matter of current units. And 
once the month-positions had been changed to make the year-bearers, 1 Akbal o 
Pop; 1 Ben o Pop, 1 Eznab o Pop, and 1 Lamat o Pop, really occupy the first and not 
the second positions in the year, as under the Old Empire system, the Maya may not 
have been able to hold out against calling the first position of their years 1 Pop, as 
did the Nahua, instead of o Pop, as they had always done before. 
. At this point, then, they may have given up calling the first position of the 
year O Pop, using 1 Pop instead, after the Nahua usage, but rather than shift Akbal 
back to 1 again, where it had been under the Old Empire, they chose the Kan, Muluc, Ix, 
and Cauac group, since under the shift of 1 forward in the month positions already 
made these now had a month coefficient of r instead of 2 as in the Old Empire, thus 
doing away with 1 Akbal o Pop as a year-bearer and substituting in its stead 1 Kan 
1 Pop, the condition actually prevalent at the time of the Spanish Conquest. 
The writer is well aware that this explanation is open to justifiable adverse 
criticism. Not only is it based upon insufficient evidence, but it also presupposes 
a change in the Maya year-bearers at a time when they were already the same as 
the corresponding Nahua year-bearers. On the other hand, it best explains the 
archeological data actually observed, and at the same time it ascribes these final 
changes to what the writer believes is at the root of this whole question, namely, 
the inevitable confusion which arose when a system of current time-units was grafted 
onto a system of elapsed time-units. This was a fundamental change indeed, and 
before the Maya had become adjusted to it, the positions of their days had shifted 
1 backward, they had lost their conception of the zero position as being that of the 
first day of the year, the year-bearers themselves had undergone a second shift 
forward; and finally, the Xiu at least, appear to have dropped 205 positions in the 
year. ‘This last took place some time after 11.15.16.12.14, when the sequence of the 
katuns as they had come down from the Old Empire was still intact at Uxmal as 
established by the date on the capstone in the East Range of the Monjas Quadrangle, 
but before that “ancient book”’ from which Don Juan Xiu copied page 66 of the 
Oxkutzcab Chronicle in 1685 was written. 
All these changes must have brought about a corresponding feeling of un- 
certainty as to just what the positions of the days in the months really should be. 
For example, on page 66 of the Chronicle of Oxkutzcab just cited, in a series of 13 
consecutive tuns, Don Juan Xiu refers Ahau to the 3, 8, 13, and 18 group of month- 
positions once (Old Empire system), to the 2, 7, 12, and 17 group five times (New 
Empire system), and to the I, 6, 11, and 16 group seven times, the last conforming 
to no system known anywhere else. On the other hand, when he gives the ending- 
days of these same 13 tuns, he makes not one error in the corresponding day-signs 
or their coefficients. 
This, in the writer’s opinion, indicates that the day sequence, the 260 days of 
the tonalamatl, had remained inviolate and unbroken from time immemorial. The 
