Note 6 — Chapter II · COSMOGONY

In his Historia Chichimeca6 Ixtlilxochitl calls the first of these epochs Atonatiuh (Water Sun), in which all men perished by a great inundation. The second epoch, Tlachitonatiuh (Earth Sun), ended with violent earthquakes. In this age lived gigantic beings called Quinames. The third epoch was Ecatonatiuh, or “Sun of Wind,” in which edifices, trees, and men were nearly all destroyed by hurricanes, those who remained being changed into creatures of an intelligence so low as to be almost indistinguishable from monkeys.7 The Texcucan chronicler does not furnish us with the name of the present age in his Historia, nor in his Relaciones,8 where, however, we receive fuller information regarding the first three epochs, which he succeeds in carelessly transposing, giving the third the second place.