. Certain antiquities of eastern Mexico. f the ancient man-uscripts or in any of the thousands of subjects engravedor sculptured on stone or painted on or modeled in they were sacred and symbolic and had some im-portant oflBce to fill in gaming or divination, in rites orceremonies, requires no proof beyond that furnished byour knowledge of the culture of the people to whom they belonged. Numerous definiteuses have been assigned to them, butI can see no sufficient reason for adopting anyone of these rather than another, and it is quite probable that the real use has notyet been guesse
. Certain antiquities of eastern Mexico. f the ancient man-uscripts or in any of the thousands of subjects engravedor sculptured on stone or painted on or modeled in they were sacred and symbolic and had some im-portant oflBce to fill in gaming or divination, in rites orceremonies, requires no proof beyond that furnished byour knowledge of the culture of the people to whom they belonged. Numerous definiteuses have been assigned to them, butI can see no sufficient reason for adopting anyone of these rather than another, and it is quite probable that the real use has notyet been guessed, save perhaps in the mo^t general way. Attempts that have been made to decipher the meaning of the stoneyokes by comparing them with figures in Mexican and Maya codices havenot been wholly successful, although shedding some lighton the subject. a The Sacred Maya Stone of Mexico and its Symbolism, London, 189S. 6 Archeological Studies among the Ancient Gltiee of Mexico. Field ColunMcm, Mueewm, Anthropo-logical Series, V, no. 1, p. Fig. 54. Concave side of curvedstone. (Museo Nacional, Mex-ico.) 260 CERTAIN ANTIQUITIES OF EASTERN MEXICO [bth. ANN. 25 Investigations in this lin^ were early suggested by Strebel, but not car-ried out. The rebus or place name, for instance Nautzinlan, consistsof a yoke-formed figure placed above the legs and abdomen of a humanbeing and is interpreted by Penafiel as a place of fruitfulness. Thefigure of the yoke, according to this author, is a kind of receptaclefull of black spots, a symbol of maternity, reproduction or the Codex Vaticanus, a profile figure resembling a yoke has beenthought to symbolize the Earth god or the Death god or goddess. Inother words, the scant pictographic material available supports thetheory that the Mexican stone yokes are associated with germinationrites. Mrs Nuttall and Doctor Rust* suggest that the curvedstones used by the California Indians in certain puberty rites mayhave some relation to the sto
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