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Chapter 4

New Windows on the World:

Working the Land and Sailing the Sea

The first clear evidence of agriculture appears in
Soconusco during the period which archaeologists have called the
Locona (1650-1500 B.C. What is not so clear, however, is whether the
earliest cultivated plants were roots and tubers, such as manioc and
sweet potatoes, or seed crops, such as maize, beans, and chiles.
Certainly there is little question but that roots and tubers would
have been easier for incipient farmers to cultivate because they are
propagated from shoots and will grow under a wide variety of soil and
moisture conditions, as Sauer has pointed out (1952); on the other
hand, by the end of the Locona period maize definitely appears to have
become the dominant crop, with various beans, chiles, and squashes
supplementing the diet as well. (To commemorate the agricultural
origins of the hierarchical society which arose in Soconusco at this
time, Clark [1991, 13] suggests naming the people of the Early
Formative cultures of the region the Mokaya, which is an anglicized
version of a Mixe-Zoque word meaning "corn people.") (See Table 2 in
Chapter 2 for a chronology applicable to the entire Mesoamerican
area.) It is also likely that by this same time cacao, a tree native
to Soconusco, was being appreciatively exploited to prepare a "drink
of the gods," at least for the noble elite of the society.

Although there is little reason to assume that the
transition from a hunting-gathering-fishing-fowling economy into one
where farming had become the main source of subsistence was anything
other than gradual and unspectacular, during the Locona period
cultural influences emanating from Soconusco began to spread northward
and westward through the Tehuantepec Gap into the highlands of Oaxaca
and the lowlands of the Gulf coastal plain. Archaeological evidence
for this expanding sphere of interaction comes inevitably from such
tangible artifacts as ceramics, but by no means were the cultural
influences necessarily limited to them. We have already briefly noted
that the earliest ceramics in Mesoamerica demonstrate three distinct
geographic foci, only one of which was in Soconusco (the other two,
you will recall, were in the central highlands of Mexico and on the
northern coast of Veracruz); but if any of these foci was the
recipient of influences from further afield, such as Central and South
America, it would most likely have been Soconusco.

Now, while one does not have to predicate the
beginnings of pottery in Mesoamerica on diffusion from South America,
not to do so is to unnecessarily complicate its evolution in the
Mexican arena. Indeed, in view of the complex life history of the
maize plant as worked out by Mangelsdorf, it appears that regular and
repeated contacts between Mesoamerica and the west coast of South
America were already commonplace by at least 2000 B.C. (On the
Atlantic side of the Americas, migrants from South America are known
to have been island-hopping into the West Indies as early as 5000 B.C.
(Adams, 1991, 43).

It would not be unreasonable, therefore, to suggest
that sometime around 1500 B.C. the peaceful isolation of Soconusco may
have been brusquely punctuated by the arrival on its shores of alien
seafarers borne on large sail-bedecked log rafts. Although they came
not as conquerors or religious missionaries, their arrival signaled
the collision of two different worlds as surely as did the arrival of
the Europeans on the opposite coast of the Americas some 3000 years
later.

The newcomers may well have hailed from coastal
Ecuador, which had access to timber resources for raft construction
that were lacking farther to the south; in any case they were the
cultural heirs of the civilizations which had arisen in the exotic
river valleys of desert Peru perhaps some 800 years earlier. (The
Cerro Sechín culture, now recognized as the forerunner of the
so-called Chavín civilization, has been dated to 2300 B.C.) The
ceramics which they brought with them -- subsequently labeled as
"Ocós" after the seacoast settlement near the mouth of the border
river (Rio Suchiate) between Mexico and Guatemala, which was first
uncovered by the excavations of Michael Coe in 1960 -- were initially
likened to the Chorrera pottery of southern Ecuador. Gareth Lowe, in
his studies of Barra pottery somewhat later (1967), also saw South
American antecedents for the Ocós ceramics. However, more recent
research has called into question the dating of both the supposed
South American donor cultures and the Mesoamerican recipient cultures,
so the spread of pottery into the region may not have been as simple a
south-to-north diffusion as first thought.

Whether or not the incipient, out-reaching
civilizations of western South America provided the stimulus for
sophisticated forms of pottery to the burgeoning chieftainships of
Soconusco, it seems likely that these civilizations would have had
other, perhaps even more earthshaking influences on these pullulant
societies, for ideas travel as easily as objects or commodities.
Similarities have been noted by some scholars in the religious motifs
of the Andean area and the so-called Olmecs of Mesoamerica, so one
cannot rule out the introduction of such influences. Indeed, it is not
impossible that, interwoven in this religio-spiritual exchange, there
may have been some measure of narcotic export, for Chavín was itself a
key way station in the coca network emanating in the Amazon basin. Nor
is it likely that these southern seafarers returned home empty-handed,
for the timing of the Ocós contact coincides closely with the ultimate
breakthrough of maize as the staple crop of the Americas. Thus, the
return cargo may have included not only new and improved varieties of
corn but also such highly prized commodities as cacao, quetzal
feathers, and rubber, all of which Soconusco produced in abundance.

Figure 7.

Because of its wealth of exotic commodities, such as cacao, quetzal
feathers, and rubber, Soconusco early became a nexus of trade routes
on both land and sea. Undoubtedly one of the primary routes of
movement since time immemorial has been along the Pacific piedmont,
stretching northward into the heart of Mexico and southward into
Central America. The rugged terrain back of Izapa most likely
encouraged traders moving inland to utilize the Motozintla Pass,
through which access to both the Grijalva Depression and the highlands
of Guatemala could be gained. Sea contacts with South America had
probably already been made ca. 1500 B.C. by residents from the 0cós
area and northward along the coast as well.

The Ocós phase (1500-1350 B.C.) may well have marked
Soconusco's introduction to the world, at least to the expanding trade
network of South America's developing civilizations. As such it was a
period of unprecedented commercial activity and intellectual ferment.
What had been a relatively somnolent, self-contained, and
self-satisfied society whose horizons were limited by the mountains on
the north and the unending ocean on the south had suddenly been thrust
into contact with peoples of more advanced culture from "beyond the
sea." just knowing that they existed must have been a catalyst to
engendering an entirely new "world view" among the thinking elite of
Soconusco. Surely, life could never again be the same.

Although it is impossible to assign an accurate date to
it, there is a carved stone set into the middle of the north wall of
the ball court at Izapa (identified as Stela 67) which unmistakably
portrays some aspect of Soconusco's early maritime contacts. (It
should be noted that the archaeologists who excavated Izapa argue that
almost all of the monuments found at the site were carved and set in
place after 300 B.C. [Lowe, Lee, and Martinez, 1982, 231.) Whether
these contacts were of an explorative or a commercial nature we will
probably never know, but the depiction in question is both simple and
graphic. It shows a (bearded?) man with arms outstretched standing in
a boat crossing a body of water in which fish are portrayed beneath
the waves and two long-nosed wind-gods are shown blowing from opposite
directions. In the man's right hand is a cross. While some viewers of
the carving are immediately tempted to see the latter as a Christian
symbol, it could, of course, represent a cross staff, which was an
early navigational device. Naturally, how the carving is interpreted
has a material bearing on the age which is assigned to it. In any
event, it is obvious that the only navigable body of water within
reach of Izapa is the Pacific Ocean (had canoe traffic through the
coastal lagoons been depicted, it is unlikely that either waves or
wind-gods would have played any part in the scene), but whether the
carving testifies to a transpacific voyage or some coastal venture
there is no sure way of knowing.

CALENDARS AND COUNTING

The 260-day sacred almanac

As long as the people of Soconusco gained their livelihood from
hunting, gathering, fishing, and fowling, there was little need to
take cognizance of the rhythms of nature, except in the most general
way. Surely, everyone was familiar with the fact that the animals of
the forest mated at certain times and not at others; that some of the
trees of the forest flowered before the rains began; that sometimes
the offshore current moved from the "left hand" and at other times
from the "right"; that sometimes the sun rose over the sea and
sometimes over the land; and that the migrations of the turtles along
the coast or their trek up on the beaches to lay their eggs coincided
with certain of these "signs" and not with others.

Figure 8.

In the middle of the north wall of the ball court of Izapa is this
carving of a (bearded?) man standing in a boat with a cross in one of
his outstretched hands. In the waves beneath the boat fish are
depicted, and on each side of the boat long-nosed wind-gods blow from
opposite directions. In the inventory of monuments made at the site,
this was catalogued as Stela 67.

Even as they had consciously begun to collect the
shoots of the manioc root or the sprouts of the sweet potato (both, by
the way, of South American origin) and stick them in the ground, it
mattered little whether they did so before or after the rains came.
Manioc root grew very readily, and as long as it was well cooked
before it was pounded into paste and made into dough-balls or
tortillas, it could be counted on to still the pangs of hunger
whenever the hunters, fishers, or fowlers came home empty-handed.

On the other hand, it was quite another matter when the
serious cultivation of maize began (most likely around 1500 B.C.).
Although there never was a problem with adequate warmth in Soconusco,
to have attempted to plant corn during the dry season was to flirt
with disaster. Even a mistake of a few weeks would mean that the seeds
would dry out and die before they could start to germinate. If, on the
other hand, the would-be maize farmer waited too long before planting
his seed, the rains would begin with a vengeance and then the
likelihood of even getting the seed into the ground without having it
wash away would be minimal. Thus, while maize held out the promise of
a heavier yield and a tastier and more nutritious foodstuff, it also
demanded a greater awareness of the timing of the life-giving rains.
To realize this promise, it was now imperative, as never before, to
understand the cycle of the seasons.

But where in the random chaos of Soconusco's nature
could the careful observer discern the first semblance of order or
pattern? Certainly, changing directions of ocean currents and the
migratory habits of birds or turtles may have offered some clues, but
they were too imprecise a basis on which to establish an agricultural
timetable. The answer most likely had to be found in the movements of
the sun itself, because it could be seen to shift its positions of
rising and setting from far out over the ocean to well up beyond the
mountains with a slow, day-by-day regularity. And, in the process,
there were two days during this solar migration when the sun passed
directly overhead -- once on its journey from the sea to the land and
once on its way back again.

Anyone who made a conscientious effort to mark this
rhythm -- and obviously some curious skygazer with the luxury of time
at his disposal did -- would have realized that the most effective way
to calibrate the sun's zenithal passage was with a simple upright
pillar or post (i.e., a gnomon). At noon on the days on which the sun
passed directly overhead, the pillar would cast no shadow whatsoever,
whereas on any other days of the year that would not be the case.
Therefore, once the zenithal position of the sun had been ascertained,
a precise "date" could be assigned to it. However, either of the two
days when the sun was directly overhead was theoretically as good as
the other on which to begin the count; why, therefore, should the
skygazer prefer one of these days to the other?

Table 3 - Dates of Zenithal Sun Positions within Mesoamerica

Latitude (ºN)   Southward  Northward  Days Elapsed N-S  Days Elapsed S-N

13              August 18   April 24   116    249
13.5            August 17   April 26   113    252
14              August 15   April 27   110    255
14.5            August 14   April 29   107    258
15              August 12   May 1      103    262
15.5            August 10   May 2      100    265
16              August 8    May 4       96    269
16.5            August 7    May 6       93    272
17              August 5    May 8       89    276
17.5            August 3    May 10      85    280

Note: At the latitude of Izapa (14.8º N) the zenithal sun is overhead
on August 13 on its southward passage and again on April 30 on its
northward passage. These passages result in intervals of 105 days when
the sun is north of Izapa and 260 days when it is south of Izapa.

Of course, his choice could have been perfectly
arbitrary. But more likely, it was conditioned by another natural
phenomenon of which he could hardly have been ignorant. By sheer
coincidence, a night or two before the southward passage of the
vertical sun, the sky was literally bombarded with shooting stars
which had their apparent origin in the northeast. This was the annual
Perseid meteor shower, occasioned by Earth's passage along its orbit
through a rain of stellar debris which takes place every August. Thus,
our skygazer would have been witness to celestial fireworks which are
virtually unequaled throughout the rest of the year, beginning usually
on the night of August 11 but decidedly reaching their climax on the
evening of August 12. The following day at noon, August 13, the sun
passes through the zenith over Soconusco.

Figure 9.

The zenithal sun makes its southward passage over latitude 14º.8 N on
August 13 and its northward passage over the same parallel 260 days
later on April 30. Located along this line are both the Classic Maya
site of Copán, hypothesized as the birthplace of the sacred almanac by
Nuttall in 1928, and the Formative site of Izapa, first identified by
the author as the hearth of the calendar in 1973.

The signs were therefore unmistakable. First the
heavens would give their notice. All night long the skygazer would
watch as stars burst from behind the towering mountains to the
northeast and flashed across the sky. And the following morning, as
the sun arched higher and higher across the heavens, he would watch as
the shadow it cast grew steadily shorter, until, as the sun reached
its zenith, its shadow completely disappeared. This then, he decided,
was the day for his count to begin.

On the other hand, our skygazer was faced with
something of a philosophical dilemma. Counting days was an entirely
new experience, because up to now if it had been necessary to
enumerate anything, it may have been only such things as fish, or
cacao beans, or quetzal feathers -- all items which arc discrete
entities. Now that the day for starting the tally had arrived, the
skygazer had to decide when in the day it actually became "Day 1".
Certainly not at noon, because that was in the middle of a day that
was still in progress. For someone accustomed to think in terms of
entities rather than fractions, it was no more logical to
conceptualize a part of a day than it was a part of a fish, a cacao
bean, or a quetzal feather. It therefore must have seemed obvious that
the day could not be counted until it was completed, that is, at
sunset. In any event, this is the pattern of thought which
Mesoamericans were to employ in all their subsequent mathematical
computations. Like the odometer on an automobile recording the
distance traveled, a unit of time measurement was not counted until it
had been completed.

From clues in the internal structure of the
Mesoamerican calendar, the event just described appears to have taken
place about the middle of the fourteenth century B.C. (Confirmation of
this date may be obtained by correlating the Maya calendar with our
own using the Goodman-Martínez-Thompson value of 584,285. This reveals
that the beginning day of the 260-day sacred almanac, 1 Imix,
coincided with August 13 in the year 1359 B.C. Remember, too, that
because historians do not recognize a "year zero," as astronomers do,
when the designation "B.C." is employed it represents a date one year
older than the minus value which the latter use. Thus, 1359 B.C. to a
historian is -- 1358 to an astronomer.)

An interval of 260 days is, of course, divisible in
many ways, and among the peoples of Mesoamerica two of the most common
ways of grouping numbers were in "20's" and "13's." Both of these
numbers can be thought of as global, or universal, "givens" known to
virtually every people in the world. Obviously, the former module was
the first to be discovered by humankind, for it represented a simple
inventorying of an individual's own fingers and toes. The second
module was much less obvious -- at least, that is, until humankind
began trying to measure time; then the importance of "13" quickly
manifests itself, for this is the number of full moons within a
"year." It is definitely possible that a lunar count of sorts was
already in use in the Soconusco region, but if so, like all lunar
counts it lacked the precision which our skygazer was hoping to
achieve. In any case, the point that I am making is that it must have
seemed quite logical for him to count in groups or "bundles" made up
of either 13 or 20 days, and to assign each day in the "bundle" its
own number and name.

Having started with the southward zenithal passage of
the sun, the count was to continue until the sun once again passed
overhead on its way northward. Depending where in Soconusco one was,
that next shadowless passage took place about 260 days later -- or as
chance would have it, just as the skygazer was nearing the end of his
20-day count for the 13th time. (According to our modern calendar,
this occurs on April 30.) Of course, the resolution of the 260-day
cycle into these two key multiples may not have been totally a matter
of chance. If, for example, our skygazer's initial count had been
carried out at Chantuto -- one of the coastal lagoons where some of
the earliest population concentrations of Soconusco have been found --
it may have produced an unwieldy interval such as 261 or 262 days
between zenithal sun passages. In that event, he may have realized
that a slight shift in geography would be repaid by a result which was
mathematically far more harmonious. However, the temptation to move
southward along the coast to find such a location was not great,
because in that direction -- once past Altamira -- the protected
lagoon environment was quickly replaced by long open beaches of
wave-swept volcanic sand. By contrast the lush, well-watered slopes of
the foothills must have seemed wonderfully attractive. Indeed, there
is good evidence that the initial occupation of the area surrounding
Izapa was already under way by 1500 B.C. (Ekholm, 1969, 19). It seems
very likely, therefore, that if the felicitous 260-day interval had
not been discovered quite by chance at a coastal site such as
Altamira, a conscious decision must have been made to calibrate that
interval at Izapa. And if that is true, then the choice of Izapa's
location can well be cited as one of the first illustrations of
applied astronomy and mathematics in the New World.

Having now "massaged" his count into workable modules,
the skygazer had next to develop a system for identifying the
individual days. (Because we do not know what the skygazer called the
days of his count, we will use the terms that have come down to us
from the Aztecs -- who were his most recent heirs.) By assigning each
day a number -- never to exceed 13, but coupling it with one of 20
different names (signifying, for example, an animal, a plant, or a
force of nature) -- it would be possible to give it a unique identity
within the 260-day count. Thus, beginning with "1 Alligator" and
continuing with "2 Wind," "3 House," "4 Lizard," and so on, the count
would run through its 13 numerical permutations of its 20 day-names
and once again reach "1 Alligator" at the next zenithal Passage.

So far so good. But as the skygazer continued his
count, he may have been surprised to note that the third time he
recorded a shadowless noon it was on a day he had labeled "1 Snake"
instead of "1 Alligator." It is more likely, however, that he was well
aware that the duration of the sun's journey to the north was
considerably shorter than it was to the south, and perhaps he had
already concluded that it was more realistic to measure time in
"bundles" of 13 rather than of 20 days. The reason for thinking this
is that, on this third passage of the zenithal sun, the elapsed time
could not be evenly factored into any whole number of 20-day
"bundles," but it could be conceived as 8 "bundles" each of 13 days
duration. In any case, the cyclical regularity of such a pattern must
have been reassuring: each interval of 20 13-day "bundles" in the
south being followed by 8 13-day "bundles" in the north. Each time the
zenithal sun passed overhead on its way south, a new 260-day cycle
would begin on a day numbered "1" but with a different name. Thus, the
skygazer watched as the beginning of each successive cycle shifted
from " 1 Alligator" to " 1 Snake" to "1 Water" to " 1 Reed" and then
to " 1 Earthquake." Only when the sun finally came back on its sixth
round to "1 Alligator" again did he probably breathe a triumphal sigh
of relief to think that he had mastered the secrets of its movements
after all.

What the skygazer had discovered was that the cycle of
the sun could be charted as 28 "bundles" of 13 days, with its zenithal
passage alternating in groups of 20 and 8 "bundles" which repeated
themselves every fifth time around. (With his discovery of the module
of 28 "bundles," the Mesoamerican skygazer had unknowingly joined
company with a small community of wise men searching the skies of
India for similar clues to the cycles of the heavens. At about the
same point in time and half a world away in distance, Vedic priests
had also discovered the module of "28," only they used it in charting
the motions of the moon rather than the sun. To them it appeared that
the moon "rested" or "resided" for a period of 13 days in each of 28
"lunar mansions" as it moved across the sky during the course of a
year.) Surely, anyone in Soconusco seeking to grasp the celestial
rhythms could not fail to be impressed by the ingenious simplicity of
the skygazer's formula. Here was a tool for alerting the farmer to the
beginning of the rainy season that was easily understood by everyone:
The rains would start on or about the time of the sun's northward
passage (April 30), and the corn would be ready to harvest by the time
of its southward passage (August 13). In short, it seemed that the
skygazer had unlocked one of the most important secrets of the
heavens.

That such an annual cycle must have had overwhelming
significance to the early farmers of Soconusco is borne out by the
seasonal rhythms that continue to dominate the lives of the local
peasants in that region to this day. When Thomas Lee interviewed the
native farmers in the vicinity of Izapa in 1964, he learned that they
managed to obtain two corn crops a year without irrigation. The
principal crop, the temporada was planted in the last part of April or
early May, just ahead of the beginning of the rainy season -- and
concurrent with the northward passage of the zenithal sun. Throughout
the months of May, June, and July the rains would increase in
intensity, and during this period of concentrated heat and humidity
the farmer and his family were obliged to weed the corn every 20 days
to keep down the competing vegetation. At the end of July the crop was
ripe enough to break the stalk (a process called doblada or dobla),
which terminated further growth in the plant and allowed the husk both
to shed rainwater and to begin drying. The harvest of dry corn was
begun in mid-August -- at the time of the southward passage of the
zenith sun -- with the cobs being stored in an open bin.

The second crop, or segunda was planted during the
first three weeks of September (just before the autumnal equinox), the
seeds being sown between the standing stalks of the temporada. Twenty
days later the corn patch would be weeded and the stalks would be cut
down. By December, just in time for the winter solstice, the dobla
would take place, and during January the second crop would be
harvested. On average, the yield of the segunda was about one-third
less than that of the temporada, but field work was also less at this
season. Though religious rituals marked each of these milestones of
the agricultural year, Lee discovered that there were definitely more
fiestas to be celebrated while the segunda was growing, because it
demanded far less time and effort to produce. Thus, calendar,
livelihood, and ritual all seem to have been closely interwoven from
the very beginning (Lowe, Lee, and Martinez, 1982, 71-72).

If for no other reason than that the skygazer had
(apparently) solved one of the fundamental riddles of their universe,
he was hailed as a person of special insight, of uncommon
intelligence, and one who enjoyed the favor of the gods because he had
been allowed to share in the mysteries of the world. That he should
have been exalted by the common people is scarcely any surprise.
Although they may not have understood the significance of his
discovery, they could not fail to be awed by its results. Knowledge
was indeed power, and the skygazer would soon become an individual of
respect and authority perhaps equal to or exceeding that of the "big
man" or chieftain who exercised political control over the society --
that is, if they were not already one and the same individual.

Whether any organized religion had existed before this
time is difficult to know for sure. Certainly the invocation of magic
to insure the success of the hunt or of the fish catch must always
have been a part of the people's ritual life. In the same way, they
must have worshiped or at least attempted to placate the forces of
nature over which they had no control: the fiery eruption of
volcanoes, the violent shaking of the earth, the cataclysmic waves
which on occasion rolled in from the sea, the tempestuous storms which
periodically lashed the coast, the frightening disappearance --
however temporary -- of the sun or moon during an eclipse, the
fearsome strength and awesome beauty of the night-stalking jaguar, the
"evil spirits" that caused people to sicken and often to die for no
apparent reason. Even within their earthly paradise, there were
numerous aspects of the people's surroundings which challenged their
understanding. It was small wonder, then, that they so willingly
entrusted the ministrations of these forces and spirits to that
special elite of wise men in their midst who functioned as shamans or
priests.

Again, ceramic evidence may shed some light on the
nature of the Soconuscans' early religious beliefs. We have already
spoken about the numerous representations of obese males, or
man-animal figures which have been interpreted as supernatural or
shamanistic symbols of authority. In contrast to these are the
literally hundreds of clay figurines of voluptuous nude women which
have been found (Clark et al., 1987, 11 ). In these, a naturalistic
depiction of the female body has been accompanied with detailed
attention to hairstyles and jewelry, giving them a vibrant, erotic
quality. It is probable, therefore, that in the initial stages of
Soconusco's cultural evolution the presence of a fertility cult may
well have constituted one of the people's principal forms of religious
expression.

What is certain is that once a method for reckoning
time was developed it allowed for more formalization of religion to
take place. Now the celebration of periodic rituals or ceremonies
could be scheduled and/or orchestrated in advance. Special days could
be set aside for religious observance, with different spirits or
forces being accorded recognition at different times of the year. The
very days themselves, with their identities distinguished by numbers
and names, acquired "personalities" -- some auspicious, some
malevolent, and some neutral. It soon came to be believed that a
person had his or her personality and fortune determined by date of
birth. In short, possibly within the span of a single generation the
calendar became an integral part of the people's spiritual and private
lives, for almost all aspects of their existence seemed to be bound up
with time and its cyclical patterns.

The ready adoption of the 260-day sacred almanac by the
common people gave the practice of religion a new currency and
centrality in their society -- and the priestly caste a new stature
and prominence. The importance of knowing how to maintain the
day-count, when to schedule the proper rituals, and how to interpret
the auguries of the different events that occurred could no longer
remain the property of a single skygazer. To allow for the continuance
and transmittal of this knowledge, it must be passed on to other and
younger members of the society in an orderly fashion. Because theirs
was a preliterate society, this was most likely done through the rote
memorization of passages pregnant with meaning -- perhaps in the form
of rhyming verses to serve as mnemonic devices --  a sort of poetry
laced with scientific knowledge. Numerical records, on the other hand,
could have been kept as tallies of ticks marked on a wooden board with
a piece of charcoal, just as shamans in the mountains of Guatemala
continue to do to this day.

But these "secrets" could not be shared with just
anyone. If the priesthood was to maintain its own privileged position
of power and authority, its fund of knowledge could only be imparted
to individuals who could be entrusted to guard it as something
exclusive and special -- individuals whose attention and dedication to
this knowledge must transcend all of their other earthly concerns. It
seems clear that the solution which the priestly caste found to ensure
such complete devotion on the part of its young novitiates was not
unlike that practiced in other societies elsewhere in the world:
remove the worldly distraction of carnal desires by insisting on
celibacy and/or sexual abstinence. However, archaeological evidence
(from the Olmecs, Zapotecs, and Maya) strongly suggests that verbal
injunctions were not insurance enough, and that the price of admission
to the priestly caste may well have come to involve castration, if not
total emasculation. (There are numerous indications in the art of
these peoples that such a practice was not necessarily a fate reserved
solely for conquered captives, but that it was also a ritual of a
religious nature. Piña Chan, for one, makes reference to this in his
final work on the Olmecs (1989, 1911.)

On the one hand, our skygazing priest must have reveled
in the power which his knowledge had given him. His "discovery" had
not only brought him heightened respect and enhanced authority
personally, but it had also laid the groundwork for the
intensification of religious activity and the emergence of an entire
social class whose very raison d'étre was the calendar itself. On the
other hand, it must have been terribly disquieting for him to realize
that, after a few rounds of the calendar, it was not really working as
he had first assumed it would. Yes, there were always 260 days between
the time that the sun passed overhead on its way south and the time it
passed overhead again on its way north. But the days on which these
solar passages occurred did not continue to take place on "1 Snake,"
or "1 Water," or "1 Reed," anymore. Instead they began falling on
later days, such as "2 Wind," "3 Deer," and "4 Monkey." Certainly
there was nothing to be gained and everything to be lost by admitting
that the calendar was defective. This privileged bit of information
must surely not be shared with anyone but a member of the inner
sanctum.

But more than that, should the calendar continue to
deviate further and further from the observable realities of the
meteor shower or the beginning of the rainy season, even the untutored
masses would gradually become aware of its shortcomings. Where would
the priest's credibility be then? For his own reputation's sake, let
alone for reasons of intellectual honesty, he would have to pin down
the cycle of the seasons more accurately than he had on this first
attempt.

The 365-day secular calendar

Where the priest had erred, of course, was in
concluding that the cycle of the sun could be measured in 28 "bundles"
of 13 days. This meant that he had equated its annual migration
through the heavens with an interval of 364 days, when in actuality it
took about a day and a quarter longer than that. Thus, after only four
years had elapsed his count was already off by 5 days. This might go
unnoticed by the commoners at first, but certainly, as the error
increased with each passing year, it wouldn't be long before "the cat
was out of the bag."

But, if the sun couldn't be pinned down accurately
enough by its zenithal passages, how might the priest fix the length
of the year with yet greater precision? He knew, of course, that the
sun moved across the heavens between two fixed points. At its
southernmost extreme, however, the sun both rose out of and set into
the unmarked sea, so there was no means of fixing its position there;
but at its northernmost turning point, the sun both rose out of and
set into the great wall of mountains which towered above Soconusco's
inland approaches. By patient observation of the sun as it neared its
northern extreme he reasoned that he could find a place from which its
turning point could be calibrated against a permanent marker in the
landscape -- namely, a mountain.

Once this idea had occurred to our skygazing priest, he
must have quickly set about searching for the vantage point from which
this phenomenon could best be observed and against a landmark where it
could best be calibrated. The mountains to the northwest were neither
so lofty nor so sharply defined as those to the northeast, so the
latter would definitely meet his needs better. The peaks on the
northeastern horizon were, of course, the cones of a great row of
volcanoes that began with them and stretched far to the southeast
through what today are the countries of Guatemala, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. One of these great volcanoes would lend
itself splendidly for his purpose; indeed, it promised to add an
element of theater to his endeavor because what the priest was
preparing to do was to demonstrate that the annual cycle of the sun
could be measured by the interval between successive risings of this
fiery orb out of the crater of one of the great mountains of fire.

We can only imagine with what anticipation he
approached the "moment of truth," knowing how awestruck his menial
subjects would be as it transpired. But, not content with the
forthcoming theatrics which would accompany his "discovery," he was
also polishing up the details of his new calendar and the means of
employing it so that his second attempt at mastering celestial
mechanics would be far more successful than his first, less
sophisticated effort.

As his principal modification, he now recognized that
the year had 365 days and not 364. But, because he was hampered by a
mind-set that failed to recognize fractions (after all, you either
have a finger or a toe or you don't!), even if he had been aware that
the year was almost a quarter day longer yet, he could not have
conceptualized it. He therefore visualized the year as being composed
of 18 "bundles" of 20 days each, leaving 5 extra days left over at the
end of the year. Each of the 18 "bundles" he recognized as a unit
(which we would term a "month," although it clearly had nothing to do
with an interval defined by the moon).

Moreover, he had come up with another ingenious
concept, again apparently stimulated by his inability to recognize
fractions. Although he understood that his new time-count would begin
with the rising of the sun, he was careful to note that the day it was
initiating was not really a day until it had finished -- in the same
way that even though the zenithal sun passed overhead at noon, the day
on which it occurred was not a day by the count until the sun had set.
Thus, although there were 20 days in each of his 18 "bundles," he
chose to number them 0 through 19. The concept of zero in itself was
ingenious, because it didn't just symbolize "nothing"; it really meant
"in progress," because until it was "completed," there was no place
for 1. And not until day 19 was completed could one speak of the first
"month" or "bundle" having been finished. The day literally did not
have a discrete identity until it was a matter of history; or, to put
it another way, it had not truly existed until it was over!

Figure 10.

The site of Izapa lies on the right bank of the Rfo Suchiate, which
today forms part of the boundary between Mexico and Guatemala. In
addition to its key latitudinal location with respect to the zenithal
sun passages on August 13 and April 30, Izapa is also sited in such a
fashion that the position of the rising sun at the summer solstice is
marked on the northeastern horizon by the cone of Tajumulco, the
highest mountain in all of Central America.

Although it may have been the skygazing priest's intent
to replace his first attempt at a calendar with this second, more
accurate version, he probably did not long entertain such a notion.
Already accepted and "sanctified" by the use of the masses, the
260-day sacred almanac had assumed such a place in their lives that it
could not easily be rescinded. (Its continued prominence in the
agricultural and ritual cycle of Soconusco, as demonstrated earlier,
is adequate proof of that.) Even if it did not work to predict the
coming of the rains, it had already become such a central feature of
the people's ritual existence that to attempt to expunge it would have
meant demolishing the very underpinnings of their religious beliefs.

Figure 11.

The volcano Tajumulco looms up on the northeastern horizon as seen
from Izapa. With an azimuth of 65º, its peak marks the sunrise at the
summer solstice (June 22).

As the summer solstice neared, it was clear that the
priest had yet another momentous idea in the back of his mind.
Already, at his direction, his scouts had narrowed down the ideal
vantage point from which to observe the impending sunrise. So, when
his retinue of followers trekked with him up into the foothills on the
evening of June 21, it was to a site where the forthcoming "celestial
spectacular" could not have gone unappreciated by even the most simple
of peasant farmers. The following morning, the glowing disk of the sun
rose out of the crater of the loftiest volcano in all of Central
America -- Tajumulco, in what is today southwestern Guatemala. And it
was on this site -- from where the 260-day sacred almanac and the new
365-day secular calendar could both be calibrated -- that the priest
decreed the building of the first great ceremonial center in all of
Mesoamerica, a place whose name has come down to us as Izapa.

Figure 12.

Around 1300 B.C. Izapa was probably the only semi-urbanized
agglomeration in all of Mesoamerica. It was the direct outgrowth of
the appearance of ranked chiefdoms in the Soconusco region, which
first emerged some two to three centuries earlier. Through most of its
early history it probably functioned more as a religious retreat and
pilgrimage site than as a center of population and trade.

Again, by using the Goodman-Martínez-Thompson
correlation value of 584,285, it is possible to fix the date of this
event according to our own calendar with perfect accuracy. As I
programmed my computer to search for the beginning of the secular
calendar, I could confidently start with the correspondence between
Maya and Julian dates which Goodman provided us. But in addition, one
further assumption was required: that the first day of the 365-day
secular calendar -- known to the Maya as 0 Pop --must have coincided
with the summer solstice. If we accept that assumption, we find that 0
Pop did in fact fall on June 22 during the years 1324 to 1321 B.C.
(i.e., the astronomical years -1323 to -1320). (Of course, were we to
employ June 21 as the date of the summer solstice, this would advance
the correlation by four years, i.e., 1328-1325 B.C. instead.) Thus, it
is entirely conceivable that, as has been sketched out in the scenario
above, both the 260-day sacred almanac and the 365-day secular
calendar were the product of the same individual -- a "New World
Hipparchus," as Sylvanus Morley has termed him -- for the beginning
dates of both counts are separated by little more than 30-35 years!

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