The interpreter of the Codex Vaticanus states that “in the first age” (or “Sun,” as these periods were called by the Nahua of Mexico) “water reigned until at last it destroyed the world.... This age, according to their computation, lasted 4,008 years, and on the occurrence of that great deluge they say that men were changed into fish, named Tlacamichin, which signifies men-fish.” [45] The second age, he tells us, lasted for 4,010 years and the world was ended by the force of violent winds, the catastrophe concluding by the transformation of men into apes. The third age endured for 4,801 years and ended in a universal fire, and in the fourth, which occupied 5,042 years, the human race, which had never ceased to transmit a few survivors from one of these epochs to the next, was almost destroyed by famine. In his Historia Chichimeca [46] 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. [47] The Texcucan chronicler does not furnish us with the name of the present age in his Historia, nor in his Relaciones, [48] where, however, we receive fuller information regarding the first three epochs, which he succeeds in carelessly transposing, giving the third the second place. Camargo [49] would almost appear to have been indebted to Ixtlilxochitl for his version of the creation myth, but he seems to have been under the impression that only two of the epochs were ended. That three past cataclysms had taken place and that four ages in all had occurred is, indeed, the most generally favoured version of the story, but some authorities seem to have been of the opinion that a myth was current among the Mexican people which stated that no less than five epochs had taken place in the history of the world. Gama, Gomara, and Humboldt share this view, and Mendieta is of opinion that five “suns” existed before the present era, all of which were of such noxious character that the inhabitants of the earth languished and perished through their baneful influence.