An inquiry into the origin of the antiquities of America / By John Delafield, Jr. With an appendix, containing notes, and 'A view of the causes of the superiority of the men of the Northern over those of the Southern Hemisphere', by James Lakey.
- John Delafield
- Date:
- 1839
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An inquiry into the origin of the antiquities of America / By John Delafield, Jr. With an appendix, containing notes, and 'A view of the causes of the superiority of the men of the Northern over those of the Southern Hemisphere', by James Lakey. Source: Wellcome Collection.
92/195 (page 49)
![every month, and to the twenty solemn feasts celebrated in the course of a civil year, in the Teocallis, or Houses of God. “A passage in the History of the Incas, by Garcillasso de la Vega, induced Bailly and Lalande to believe that the Peruvians calculated by cycles of seven days. 4 The Peruvians,’ says Garcillasso, 4 count their months by the moon; they count their half months by the increase and decrease of the moon, and compute the weeks by quarters, without having any particular names for the week days.’ ” * Acosta differs from Garcillasso in this particular, and Humboldt attributes to him greater weight of authority, on account of his 44 having composed the first books of his Physical History of the New Continent at Peru;” but his reason for their recognition of the period of seven days is not altogether satisfactory when he says: 44It is indebted for its origin to the number of the planets.” [Elle doit son origine au nombre des planetes.] To satisfy us on this point, the connexion between the two should be explained. Humboldt, however, not recognising the reasons given by Acosta, nor yet admitting that Garcillasso was accurate, says: 44 After short reflection on the Peruvian calendar, we may perceive that, though the phases of the moon change almost every seven days, the correspondence is not yet exact enough to produce, in a lapse of several consecutive months, an agreement between the cycle of seven days and the phases of the moon. The Peruvians, according to Polo, and many other contemporaneous writers, had years [huata] containing three hundred and sixty days, numbered and calculated on solar observations made day by day at Couzco. The Peruvian year was divided, as is customary in southern Asia, into twelve moons, [guilla,] the synodical revolutions of which end at three hundred and fifty-four days, eight hours, and forty-eight minutes. To correct the lunar year, and make it agree with the solar, they added, according to an ancient custom, eleven days, which, after an edict from the Incas, were distributed among the twelve moons. After this disposal, it is impossible that four equal periods, into which they might have divided the lunar months, could be composed of seven days each, and yet coincide with the phases of the moon. The same historian, whose evidence is cited by Mr. Bailly in support of the opinion that the week of the Hindoos was known by the Peruvians, attests that, in consequence of an ancient law of the Inca Pachachutec, they ought * Vue3 des Cordilleres, folio, Paris, pp. 127, 128. N](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30455662_0092.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
