j) The archaeologist Hermann Beyer interprets the figures stamped on the smiles of the serpents as conventionalizations of fire; we find the supposition very probable. But each scale represents at the same time the renovation of a period of time (idea also proposed by Dr. Valentlni); and that period can be nothing but that figured by the fire which they enclose: 52 solar years. As the scales are 24, the combination expresses 1,248 years, which added to the 416 of the little bars sum the 1,664 of which the entire age had to be composed. The number possesses another peculiarity—1,664 solar years equal 1,040 Venus years, a figure which was also considered sacred. On the other hand, if we sum 416 (taking them from the little bars) and 624, number obtained from the scales affected by the half-circle the same number, 1,040, will be obtained, this time referring to solar years. No one is ignorant of the extreme importance which the ancient Indians of Yucatan and the Plateau ascribed to their numerical combinations, which has given basis for tracing affinities between the authors of these sculptures and the old Pythagorean School (little probable in our opinion, though not impossible).
We repeat that the immediate, natural, and simple reading of the stone is that which corresponds to the data of the Toltec tradition: Three ages of the world have passed, and we find ourselves in the fourth, begun with Ce técpatl, and which will end with the year 13-ácatl. In this sense, the relief is neither more nor less than the expression of the historic sun or present epoch of its constructors, and it is in accord with the grand fresco of Teotihuacan, in which two high priests celebrate the renovation of a new epoch, symbolized by a great sun with four knots—416 years.
With respect to Aztec dates, it is possible to encounter them: but their reading is less obvious, though not strained. To admit it depends upon the inductive value which may be assigned to certain circumstances, such as the monolith having been found in a Mexican city, the fact that the year 1479 was 13-ácatl, the relationship of the Toltecs and the Tenochas, the narrative of Durán, and the mathematical adjustment of the numbers 624 and 156 with the capital events of the history of the people of Motecuhzoma, accepting the year 700 as a point of departure.
We may add that Abadiano reads the number 1,664 in the border of the commemorative stone known as that of Tizoc (and in fact, it is found there), a monolith which he supposes closely related to that of the Calendar. But, apart from the fact that he claims to find in the relief an infinity of cyclical and chronological periods proceeding from
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