Mesoamerican architecture there is no evidence that this phenomenon was the result of a purposeful design intended to commemorate the equinoxes. Much Mesoamerican architecture is also aligned to roughly 15° east of north. Vincent H Malmstrom has argued that this is because of a general wish to align the pyramids to face the sunset on August 13, which was the beginning date of the Maya Long Count calendar. However, recent research has shown that the earliest orientations marking sunsets on August 13 (and April 30) occur outside of the Maya area. Their purpose must have been to record the dates separated by
Mesoamerican writing systems skin covered with stucco. These codices are read in boustrophedon, a zigzag style in which the reader follows red lines that indicate the way to read. Most of the current knowledge about the writing of the Mixtecans is due to the work of Alfonso Caso, who undertook the task of deciphering the code based on a set of pre-Columbian and colonial documents of the Mixtec culture. Although the Mixtecs had a set of symbols that allowed them to record historical dates, they did not use the long count calendar characteristic of other southeast Mesoamerican writing systems. Instead, the codices that