What data might demonstrate that the 260-day count was based on lunar cycles? From a symbolic point of view, dualism is a point of embarkation: light-dark, male-female, good-bad (see Faron 1967, Giddens 1986). In China, yin is lunar (water, female) and yang is solar (fire, male) (Bonnefoy 1981, 2:1011); the union of complementary opposites creates wholeness. Welte (1964) discusses Aztec dualism in value orientations regarding time; ideal positions are past, and the real positions are future. For other aspects of Aztec dualism see Welte (1964:555) and Clendinnen (1985:79). Marcus (1989) used the dualism of the present-day Otomanguean religion to interpret iconographic traits in the archeological record of Oaxaca, with lightning and earth as opposing/dominant forces of Zapotec religion. (Also see Joyce 1993:255, Stocker 1993).
The Aztecs, as many civilizations world-wide, had a solar calendar composed of 365 days. Ipso facto, there is a dualistic basis for assuming that the 260-day count was lunar. Recently, the focus for explaining the 260-day count has been finding a 1:1 260-day correlation in the natural world (see Peeler and Winter 1993). This may not be the case. We know that the 20 signs are derived from the Aztec¡¯s mathematical base, but we have no natural correlate for 13, or a natural correlate that is unanimously accepted. Waterman (1916:323) summarized many early suggestions. For example, Thirteen ¡°important¡± parts of the body, ¡°¡¦ten fingers, one ear, one eye, and the mouth.¡± Thirteen represent the waning or waxing of the moon. Eight solar years equal five Venus years, thus a combination of the two equal thirteen. More recent attempts analogize the human gestation period (Earle and Snow 1983). This presumes that the Aztecs averaged numbers, for which there is no evidence.
Stocker and Dodge (1993) proposed that 13 from the occasional 13 full moons in a solar year, such as 1993. We have the Western phrase ¡°once in a blue moon¡±, a month with two full moons, August 1993. The Aztecs counted full moons, and they were quite precise about certain order in their lives (Welte 1964). The natural order of events is 12 full moons in one solar year, thus 13 full moons in a solar year would have been a special event and a special number, and 13 x 20 = 260.
Cross-cultural corroboration
There is also some cross-cultural corroboration of a lunar base for the 260-day count. The earliest recording of the Tahitian annual cycle, made up of lunar months, was by Joseph Banks between 1768-1771 (Beaglehole 1962:I, 368-369).
For their Method of dividing time, I was not able to get a complete Idea of it, I shall¡¦set down what¡¦I know. In speaking of time either past or to come they never use any term but Moons, of which they count 13 and then begin again: this of itself sufficiently shows that they have an Idea of the solar year but how they manage to make their 13 months agree with it I never could find out¡¦ [sic]
Another interesting link between the moon and 13 is from Hawaii. In discussing the Hawaii months, Kamakau (1976:17) notes that each month was comprised of 30 days, and that the 30 days were divided into two groups according to the phases of the moon Seventeen nights were counted in one group and thirteen in another.
Hermeneutic evidence from the ethnohistorical record
The Aztecs did not see a ¡°man in the moon.¡± They saw a rabbit (Fig. 1, see Stocker 2001). Sahagun (1953:3-8) provides a mythology of how the rabbit came to be in the moon. This becomes important, as will be explained fully, because the rabbit is one of the 20 signs in the 260 day count. Further, one of the four Aztec year signs, the rabbit represents the south-the path of the moon (Sahagun 1953: Fig 20).
ILLUSTRATION to be inserte
