Cogolludo continues: "In a town named Tixuala-tun, which signifies 'the place where they place one stone above another,' they say that they kept their archive, containing records of all events.... In current speech katun signified era and when a person wished to say he was sixty years of age, he used the expression to have three eras of years or three stones. For seventy they said three and a half stones or four less one-half stone. From this it may be seen that they were not too barbarous, for it is said that [by this system] they were able to keep such exact records that they not only certified an event but also the month and day on which it took place."
By referring to Maya and Spanish dictionaries we gain supplementary valuable information about native memorial stones. We find the name amaytun given as that of "a square stone on which the ancient Indians used to carve the 20 years of the period ahau-katun, because the four remaining years which completed the epoch, were placed underneath, so as to form a sort of pedestal which was called, for this reason, lath oc katun or chek oc katun. By extension, painted representations [of the epoch] were also named amaytun." The dictionary further informs us that amayté was the name for the first twenty years of the ahau katun, which were carved on the square stone and we see that amayté also means "something square or with corners" and is formed of amay=corner.
Equipped with the foregoing knowledge of the sort of memorial it was customary for the Mayas to erect, let us now see whether the ruins of Copan furnish any monuments which would answer to the description and purpose of "amay-tés" and "ka-tuns." Referring the reader to parts I-III of Mr. A. P. Maudslay's work already cited, I draw special attention to the following stelæ and altars which are so admirably figured therein.