[D66] [JD: 2] Azteca/Mexica Calendar Correlations

[R.O.]

http://www.calmecacanahuac.com/blog/calendar/aztecamexica-calendar-correlations-the-good-the-bad-and-the-completely-useless/

Azteca/Mexica Calendar Correlations: the Good, the Bad, and the 
Completely Useless

  admin November 3, 2015 27	

There are many Aztec/Mexica calendar correlations out there and it can 
be very intimidating to try to figure out which correlation is the most 
accurate.  This entry will help sort out the different calendar 
correlations in a simplified way.  Please note that this is by no means 
an exhaustive list of all of the calendar correlations available but 
rather the most widely used by scholars and cultural practitioners. 
Hopefully, by understanding how the Azteca/Mexica calendar works and 
correlates to Earth’s position around the sun, you will be able to 
critique other calendar correlations that you come upon.
Only recently has there been a good calendar correlation that actually 
aligns to the calendar that was maintained in Tenochtitlan at the time 
of the arrival of the Spaniards.  The fact that it has taken so long for 
us to have an accurate calendar correlation available to us is 
interesting considering that we have a wide range of primary sources 
that reference the calendar.  The problem we have when it comes to 
primary sources is the Spanish and Native chroniclers who wrote about 
the calendar pretty much all disagreed with each other.  This point 
illustrates how bad the problem is: in 1967, Alfonso Caso undertook the 
most exhaustive study on the Nahua calendar surveying 42 sources ranging 
from the 16th to the 20th century. Caso documented the starting months 
of the year in these sources and according to his analysis, 14 cited 
Tlacaxipehualiztli, 14 cited Atlcahualo, 7 cited Izcalli, 3 cited 
Tititl, 2 cited Atemoztli, 1 cited Panquetzalli, and 1 cited Toxcatl. 
It doesn’t end there and it is a similar situation when one wants to 
find out about the first day of the year and intercalary corrections. 
At one point in the Florentine Codex, two Spanish chroniclers actually 
have a heated argument about whether or not the Native Mexican calendars 
incorporated a leap year.  The situation can be explained with this 
quote from Zelia Nuttal:

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