History of the Aztec Calender

The empire of the Mexican (or Aztecs as the Spanish called them) fell to Hernan Cortez and his conquistadors in 1521. Just a few, short years later the Aztec temples were obliterated and valuable records such as friar Bernardino de Sahagun's codices, (a twelve volume encyclopedia of Aztec life and culture) secreted and gathering dust.

It was in 1790, when widespread interest in Mexico's pre-Hispanic past was awakened due to an astonishing artifact that was uncovered during the renovation of "El Zocalo," Mexico city's central plaza. It was a massive disk of carved basalt, three feet thick and 12 feet in diameter, weighing some 24 metric tons. The Mexican Aztec Calendar is considered a veritable monument to Mexican art and science.The monolith remained at the Zocalo, for viewing in the base of the Metropolitan Cathedral. About one hundred years later it was transferred to Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology, where it still stands as the Museum's centerpiece.

This intricately carved hieroglyphs was labeled the Mexican Aztec Calendar Stone. In current thought, the Stone of the Fifth Sun is considered a more apt moniker. Scholars have long debated the stone's meaning and purpose and are still puzzled over its mysteries. Today most agree that it offers a graphic representation of the Mexica cosmos.

The outer rim of the stone shows two fire serpents meeting fave to face at the lower extreme. Their tails are joined at the top with the symbol for the ritual date 13-Reed, considered to represent the creation possibly corresponding to 1011A.D. The center of the stone shows the sun god Tonatuih. His tongue in the form of a sacrificial flint knife, protrudes from between his bared teeth, while in each claw-like hand, he grasps a humane heart. The god is surrounded by four glyphs symbolizing the cataclysms that ended each of the prior solar eras. As per Mexican belief, earth's earliest inhabitants were devoured by jaguars. The demise of the second sun brought destruction by great winds. The third era ended with fiery rain, while the fourth sun was extinguished by massive floods.

These symbols, together with the image of Tonatuih, are neatly contained in the abstract motif for motion called ollin. It is surmised that the Mexican Aztec Calendar reveals the predicted date of destruction for 'El Quinto Sol' during a 4-Ollin cycle. The Mexicas attempted to preserve their era, forestalling catastrophe by sating the gods with myriad rituals and sacrifices, including a steady diet of human blood.

The formula by which the two calendars were combined meant that no one date would be repeated for a period of 18,980 days. So, the the last day of a solar cycle and the last day of a sacred cycle coincided just once every 52 years. It was on this auspicious time that 'El Quinto Sol' was considered in greatest jeopardy of extinction. A successful New Fire ceremony would assure the reappearance of the orb and continued survival of human civilization.

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