File:The ancient cities of the New World - being travels and explorations in Mexico and Central America from 1857-1882 (1887) (14780527044).jpg

Identifier: ancientcitiesofn00char (find matches)
Title: The ancient cities of the New World : being travels and explorations in Mexico and Central America from 1857-1882
Year: 1887 (1880s)
Authors: Charnay, Désiré, 1828-1915
Subjects: Indians of Mexico Indians of Central America
Publisher: London : Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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oth, andsome like velvet. They had also the art of interweaving withthese the delicate hair of animals and birds feathers, which madea cloth of great beauty. Ixtlilxochitl* is afraid to pursue thepanegyric of this people, lest it should appear exaggerated.Their calendar was adopted by all the tribes of Anahuac andCentral America ; it divided the year into eighteen months oftwenty days each, adding five intercalary days to make up the fullnumber of three hundred and sixty-five days ; these belonged tono month, and were regarded as unlucky. Both months and dayswere expressed by peculiar signs ; and as the year has nearly sixhours in excess of three hundred and sixty-five days, they providedfor this by intercalating six days at the end of four years, whichformed leap year. Tlapilli, knots, were cycles of thirteen years; * Ixtlilxochiil, fourth Rclacion. Tula. 89 four of these cycles was a century, which they called xmhmolpilli,binding up of knots, represented by a quantity of reeds bound
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-j~_5^. ,--—(^ :i!^L::i^ COTTON SPINNING. too-ether. Besides the bundle of fifty-two years, the Toltecshad a larger cycle of one hundred and four years, called a great 9© The Ancient Cities of the New World. age, but not much used. The whole system rested on therepetition of the signs denoting the years^ enabhng one by meansof dots to determine accurately to what cycle or what century eachyear belonged. And as these signs stood differently in each cycle,confusion was impossible ; for the century being indicated bya number showing its place in the cycle, the dots would make iteasy to determine to what age any given year belonged, accordingto its place at knot first, second, third, or fourth. Thus forinstance, the year tccpatl flint, calli house, tochtli rabbit,and acatl reed, beginning the great cycle, would have one,five, nine, thirteen clots in the first series ; four, eight, twelve, inthe second ; three, seven, fourteen, in the third ; and two, six, ten,in the fourth series, whic

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