Aboriginal Races of America [pp. 59-92]

90 Aboriginal Races of America. [July,
"The other computation of time was a period of thirteen days, which
was designated as being the count of the moon, and which is said to
have been derived from the number of days when, in each of its revolutions, the moon appears above the horizon during the greater part of
the night." *
"We distinguish the days of our months by their numerical order:
first, second, third, etc., day of the month, and the days of our week by
specific names, Sunday, Monday, etc. The Mexicans distinguished every
one of their days of the period of twenty days, by a specific name,
Cipactli, Ehecatl, etc.; and every day of the period of thirteen days, by
a numerical order, from one to thirteen."t
These can be neither called weeks nor months, but wvere
arbitrary divisions, which were doubtless used long before
the Christian era, and no doubt long before the Americans had any idea of the true length of the solar year. This
they arrived at with considerable accuracy, but, we have
reason to believe, not many centuries before the Spanish
conquest.
There has been much discussion with regard to the origin
of the astronomical knowledge of the American races.
Humboldt has pointed out some striking coincidences in
the Mexican mode of computing time, names of their months,
etc., with those of Thibet, China and other Asiatic nations,
which would look very much as if they had been borrowed
and engrafted on their original system at some comparatively recent period. On the other hand, he has pointed out
some of the special peculiarities which distinguish the Mexican calendar, and which cannot be ascribed to foreign origin,-such as the facts, already mentioned, that the Mexicans
never counted by months, weeks, etc.
What is remarkable, too, says Humboldt, is that the calendar
of Peru "affords indubitable proofs not only of astronomical
observations, and of a certain degree of astronomical knowledge, but also that their origin was independent of that of
the Mexicans. If both the Mexican and Peruvian calendar
were not the result of their own independent observations,
we must suppose a double importation of astronomical
~Gallatin, Notes, Trans. Ata. E. 9, p. 58. t]b. 58.