Certain conceptions, common to all primitive people, were shared by the Chinese and Mexicans, one of these being the belief that the earth was flat and square. The name for a year in ancient Mexican was xiuitl, literally, grass, and this was represented in the picture writings by a bunch of young blades of some sort of grass, possibly maize-shoots. “The earliest written Chinese character for a year represented a stalk of wheat.... In the ancient work entitled the San Fun, part of which was probably written in the 23d century B.C., there is evidence that among some of the aboriginal tribes of China the year, as among the Egyptians and some of the people of India, was divided into three periods, known as the grass-springing, tree-reigning and tree-decaying periods. Under the higher culture of the Chinese these divisions disappeared and the twelve months became the recognized parts of the year” (Douglas, China, pp. 269 and 310). Amongst the Mexican month-names there are also some which allude to such regularly recurring and impressive natural phenomena as the sprouting of trees and the appearance of verdure or springing of the maize, etc. An indication as to what was the most ancient and primitive method of rotation employed seems afforded by the Chinese description how, for governmental purposes, the five-year period was adopted, one year pertaining to the emperor or central ruler and the following four to the quarters of the empire. An analogous employment of a quinary period as a means of obtaining a rotation of contribution from the four quarters of the empire to its metropolis, identified with the first day, is discernible in the Mexican institution of the macuil-tianquiztli, or five-day market, by which means the entire year was divided into five-day groups. A study of the ancient Chinese calendar furnishes, moreover, an indication of the way in which the numeral 12 came to be recognized and adopted by primitive people. It is obvious that the early astronomers, having determined the length of the year by observing Ursa Major at nightfall, recognized that, during the period required for its annual complete revolution around the pole star, there regularly appeared twelve new moons. In China, at a remote period, a division of the year into “months was adopted, the early names of which have, according to the author of the earliest Chinese dictionary, the Urhye, been lost.” “The modern Chinese year is lunar in its divisions, though regulated by the sun in so far that New Year’s day is made to fall on the first new moon after the sun enters Aquarius and varies between 21st January and 19th of February” (Douglas, _op. cit._ p. 258). It would seem as though some fresh impulse, or institution of moon-cult, had influenced Shun, Yaou’s successor, to reorganize the empire, which had been simply divided into quarters, and subdivide it into 4×3=12 districts.