“All writers concur in stating that the market was held on each fifth day, when all adults were obliged by law to resort to the appointed market-place. The entire produce and manufacture of the state were brought there, even from great distances, severe penalties being incurred by those who bartered the products of agriculture or manual labor on the highway or elsewhere. On the broad, straight, cemented roads which led from the four quarters to the heart of the capital, ‘resting places’ for the wayfarers and carriers were provided at fixed intervals. The enormous concourse of people, the variety of produce exhibited in the market-places of Montezuma's capital filled the conquerors with wonder and admiration. From Cortés, Bernal Diaz, Sahagun and others we learn that the market was a special charge of the supreme chief of Mexico; that appointed officers presided in state over it whilst others moved among the throng superintending the traffic. Standard measures were kept and rigorous punishment awaited those who sold by false measure or bartered stolen property.”
After making the preceding statements I advanced the opinion “that the periodical market-day was the most important regulator of the Mexican social organization and that the monolith generally known as the Calendar-stone was the Market-stone of the City of Mexico. It bears the record of fixed market days; and I venture to suggest that from these the formation of the Mexican Calendar system originated. The stone shows the existence of communal [pg 246] property and of an equal division of general contributions into certain portions....”
I concluded the above communication with the statement: “Before publishing my final results I shall submit them to a searching and prolonged investigation. An examination of the originals of many of the Codices reproduced in Lord Kingsborough's ‘Mexican Antiquities’ will be necessary to determine important points and during the forthcoming year my line of researches will be in this direction.” In my youthful enthusiasm and inexperience I little foresaw, when I wrote the above sentences, that I should spend thirteen years in diligent research before I felt ready to express my ripened conclusions concerning the Calendar-stone. Although the results I am about to submit are final they are necessarily incomplete, their full presentation with adequate illustrations being included in my forthcoming special work on the Social and Calendaric system of ancient America. For the present I have limited myself to the reproduction of the outline drawing of the monolith made by the late Dionysio Abadiano of Mexico and published in his somewhat fanciful work on this subject.[69] No one, however, had studied the Calendar-stone more carefully than he; and, besides being extremely accurate in outline, his drawing has the merit of including the eight deep circular holes which were drilled at regular intervals outside of the worked border of the stone as well as the groups of smaller circular and shallow depressions which Señor Abadiano discovered on the outer unworked portion of the monolithic block. Without discussing here the question whether the eight drill holes were intended to support a species of gnomon, as Leon y Gama first maintained, or merely served for the guidance of those who carved this marvel of accurate workmanship and symmetrical design, I shall merely point out that, although the group of circular depressions in the block, in the lower corner to the left of the spectator, offers a certain resemblance to the form of the constellation of Ursa Major, this may be merely the result of chance.
Facing the problem of the meaning and purpose of the “Calendar-stone,” after thirteen years of assiduous study, I find that the interpretation I suggested in 1886, is substantially strengthened and corroborated by freshly accumulated evidence. The difference is that I now lay less stress upon the phonetic elements and [pg 247] values of the symbols, although, as I shall set forth in the special publication alluded to, no study of the monument can be considered complete unless these be carefully analyzed and understood. The one great stride in advance that I think I have made is the recognition that the monolith is an image of the Great Plan or Scheme of Organization which has been expounded in the preceding pages and which permeated every branch of native thought.
The monument represents the high-water mark reached in the evolution of a set of ideas, which were suggested to primitive man by long-continued observation of the phenomena of Nature and by the momentous recognition of the
“northern star,
Of whose true-fixed, and resting quality,
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks,
They are all fire, and every one doth shine;