arrived at the conclusion that the tonalamatl and the calendar hinged, so to speak, upon the solar periods, came very naturally to regard the sun as the centre or hub of the intricate system which they had built up through generations. The very name Teotl, too, shows that, in later times at least, the sun was regarded as a deity, perhaps because he occupied the vault of the sky “where the gods live.”
But above and beyond this we have to regard Mexican sun-worship from an entirely different point of view. There is abundant evidence that the hunting tribes of the northern steppes, the Chichimec immigrants, possessed a primitive sun-worship of their own. It may be, indeed, that it was from this that the worship of Tonatiuh sprang, and not from the consideration of calendric science; but the criteria we possess regarding this part of the question is at present much too scanty to permit of more precise statement. But if we know that sun-worship obtained among the nomadic tribes of northern Mexico, we are somewhat ignorant of the precise form it took. One thing, however, seems certain, and that is that it was founded on the belief that the sun existed on the blood of animals, preferably deer, and that when these were scarce, on the blood of human beings. If blood-offerings to the sun were to cease, it was thought that the luminary would grow weak, fail, and become extinguished, or else would visit his wrath upon humanity in some such manner as we read of in those myths which recount the recurrent catastrophes of fire, wind, deluge, and earthquakes which the wrathful luminary brought upon mankind. I would, therefore, date the introduction of the solar worship proper into Mexico, and consequently that of human sacrifice, from the period of entry of those northern Chichimec peoples, who, entering the Valley of Mexico at an epoch shortly after the disintegration of the Toltec civilization, adopted an agricultural existence, and finding the supply of wild animals insufficient to meet the requirements of sacrifice, instituted the occasional immolation of human beings. This custom seems, indeed, to have already obtained in the case of the ritual of some of the native gods, for example, Tlaloc and the Earth-mother, and it may be, indeed,