When applied to time, the symbol of the circle in primitive art referred to the return of the seasons, not to an idea of motion in space. This is very plainly seen both in art and language. In the year-counts or winter-counts of the American tribes, the years were very generally signified by circles arranged in rows or spirals. Fig. 20 shows the Dakota winter-count, as depicted on their buffalo robes.[186]
This count is to be read from right to left, because it is written from left to right, and hence the year last recorded is at the end of the line.
Precisely similar series of circles occur on the Aztec and Maya codices, with the same signification. Moreover, the year-cycles of both these nations were represented by a circle on the border of which the years were inscribed. In Maya this was called _uazlazon katun_, the turning about again, or revolution of the katuns.[187]
The Aztec figure of the year-cycle is so instructive that I give a sketch of its principal elements (Fig. 21), as portrayed in the atlas to Duran’s History of Mexico.[188]
In this remarkable figure we observe the development and primary signification of those world-wide symbols, the square, the cross, the wheel, the circle, and the svastika. The last-mentioned is seen in the elements of the broken circle, which are:
These, conventionalized into rectilinear figures for scratching on stone or wood, became:
In the Mexican time-wheel, the years are to be read from right to left, as in the Dakota winter-counts; each of the quarter circles represents thirteen years; and these, also, are to be read from right to left, beginning with the top of the figure, which is the East, and proceeding to the North, South and West, as indicated.
The full analysis of this suggestive and authentic astronomical figure will reveal the secret of most of the rich symbolism and mythology of the American nations. It is easy to see how from it was derived the Nahuatl doctrine of the _nahua ollin_, or Four Motions of the Sun, with its accessories of the Four Ages of the world. The Tree of Life, so constantly recurring as a design in Maya and Mexican art, is but another outgrowth of the same symbolic expression for the same ideas.
That we find the same figurative symbolism in China, India, Lycia, Assyria and the valley of the Nile, and on ancient urns from Etruria, Iberia, Gallia, Sicilia and Scythia, needs not surprise us, and ought not to prompt us to assert any historic connection on this account between the early development of man in the New and Old World. The path of culture is narrow, especially in its early stages, and men everywhere have trodden unconsciously in each other’s footsteps in advancing from the darkness of barbarism to the light of civilization.