As these words prove that the foot-length was one of the standards of the Aztecs, it remains to be seen whether they enlighten us as to the octacail. I quote in connection an interesting passage by the native historian, Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl in his Historia Chichimeca, published in Lord Kingsborough’s great work on Mexico (Vol. ix., p. 242). Ixtlilxochitl is describing the vast communal dwelling built by the Tezcucan chieftain Nezahualcoyotl, capable of accommodating over two thousand persons. He writes: “These houses were in length from east to west four hundred and eleven and a half [native] measures, which reduced to our [Spanish] measures make twelve hundred and thirty-four and a half yards (varas), and in breadth, from north to south three hundred and twenty-six measures, which are nine hundred and seventy-eight yards.”
This passage has been analyzed by the learned antiquary, Señor Orozco y Berra.[[407]] The native measure referred to by Ixtlilxochitl was that of Tezcuco, which was identical with that of Mexico. The yard was the vara de Burgos, which had been ordered to be adopted throughout the colony by an ordinance of the viceroy Antonio de Mendoza. This vara was in length 0.838 metre, and, as according to the chronicler, the native measurement was just three times this (411½ x 3 = 1234½, and 326 x 3 = 978), it must have been 2.514 metre. This is equal in our measure to 9.842 feet, or, say, nine feet ten inches.
This would make the octacatl identical with those long-named ten-foot measures, which, as I have shown, were multiples of the length of the foot, as is proved by an analysis of their component words.
This result is as interesting as it is new, since it demonstrates that the metrical unit of ancient Mexico was the same as that of ancient Rome—the length of the foot-print.
Some testimony of another kind may be brought to illustrate this point.
In 1864, the Mexican government appointed a commission to survey the celebrated ruins of Teotihuacan, under the care of Don Ramon Almaraz. At the suggestion of Señor Orozco, this able engineer ran a number of lines of construction to determine what had been the metrical standard of the builders. His decision was that it was “about” met. 0.8, or, say, 31½ inches.[[408]] This is very close to an even third of the octacatl, and would thus be a common divisor of lengths laid off by it.
I may here turn aside from my immediate topic to compare these metrical standards with that of the Mound-Builders of the Ohio valley.
In the American Antiquarian, April, 1881, Prof. W. J. McGee applied Mr. Petrie’s arithmetical system of “inductive metrology” to a large number of measurements of mounds and earthworks in Iowa, with the result of ascertaining a common standard of 25.716 inches.
In 1883, Col. Charles Whittlesey, of Cleveland, analyzed eighty-seven measurements of Ohio earthworks by the method of even divisors and concluded that thirty inches was about the length, or was one of the multiples, of their metrical standard.[[409]]
Moreover, fifty-seven per cent of all the lines were divisible without remainder by ten feet. How much of this may have been owing to the tendency of hurried measurers to average on fives and tens, I cannot say; but leaving this out of the question, there is a probability that a ten foot-length rule was used by the “mound-builders” to lay out their works.