| The Maya calendar is a system of calendars used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in many modern communities in the Guatemalan highlands, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. |
| The essentials of the Maya calendar are based upon a system which had been in common use throughout the region, dating back to at least the 5th century BCE. It shares many aspects with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Zapotec and Olmec and contemporary or later ones such as the Mixtec and Aztec calendars. |
| By the Maya mythological tradition, as documented in Colonial Yucatec accounts and reconstructed from Late Classic and Postclassic inscriptions, the deity Itzamna is frequently credited with bringing the knowledge of the calendar system to the ancestral Maya, along with writing in general and other foundational aspects of Maya culture. |
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| Overview |
| The Maya calendar consists of several cycles or counts of different lengths. The 260-day count is known to scholars as the Tzolkin, or Tzolk'in.[5] The Tzolkin was combined with a 365-day vague solar year known as the Haab' to form a synchronized cycle lasting for 52 Haab', called the Calendar Round. The Calendar Round is still in use by many groups in the Guatemalan highlands. |
| A different calendar was used to track longer periods of time and for the inscription of calendar dates (i.e., identifying when one event occurred in relation to others). This is the Long Count. It is a count of days since a mythological starting-point.[7] According to the correlation between the Long Count and Western calendars accepted by the great majority of Maya researchers (known as the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson, or GMT, correlation), this starting-point is equivalent to August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar or September 6, in the Julian calendar (−3113 astronomical). The GMT correlation was chosen by John Eric Sydney Thompson in 1935 on the basis of earlier correlations by Joseph Goodman in 1905 (August 11), Juan Martínez Hernández in 1926 (August 12) and Thompson himself in 1927 (August 13).[8] By its linear nature, the Long Count was capable of being extended to refer to any date far into the past or future. This calendar involved the use of a positional notation system, in which each position signified an increasing multiple of the number of days. The Maya numeral system was essentially vigesimal (i.e., base-20) and each unit of a given position represented 20 times the unit of the position which preceded it. An important exception was made for the second-order place value, which instead represented 18 × 20, or 360 days, more closely approximating the solar year than would 20 × 20 = 400 days. The cycles of the Long Count are independent of the solar year. |
| Many Maya Long Count inscriptions contain a supplementary series, which provides information on the lunar phase, number of the current lunation in a series of six and which of the nine Lords of the Night rules. |
| Less-prevalent or poorly understood cycles, combinations and calendar progressions were also tracked. An 819-day Count is attested in a few inscriptions. Repeating sets of 9 days (see below "Nine lords of the night")[9] associated with different groups of deities, animals and other significant concepts are also known. |
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| Tzolk'in |
| The tzolk'in (in modern Maya orthography; also commonly written tzolkin) is the name commonly employed by Mayanist researchers for the Maya Sacred Round or 260-day calendar. The word tzolk'in is a neologism coined in Yucatec Maya, to mean "count of days" (Coe 1992). The various names of this calendar as used by precolumbian Maya people are still debated by scholars. The Aztec calendar equivalent was called Tonalpohualli, in the Nahuatl language. |
| The tzolk'in calendar combines twenty day names with the thirteen day numbers to produce 260 unique days. It is used to determine the time of religious and ceremonial events and for divination. Each successive day is numbered from 1 up to 13 and then starting again at 1. Separately from this, every day is given a name in sequence from a list of 20 day names: |
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| Tzolk'in calendar: named days and associated glyphs |
| Seq. Num.1 |
Day Name2 |
Glyph Example3 |
16th-c. Yucatec4 |
Reconstructed Classic Maya5 |
| 01 |
Imix' |
 |
Imix |
Imix (?) / Ha' (?) |
| 02 |
Ik' |
 |
Ik |
Ik' |
| 03 |
Ak'b'al |
 |
Akbal |
Ak'b'al (?) |
| 04 |
K'an |
 |
Kan |
K'an (?) |
| 05 |
Chikchan |
 |
Chicchan |
(unknown) |
| 06 |
Kimi |
 |
Cimi |
Cham (?) |
| 07 |
Manik' |
 |
Manik |
Manich' (?) |
| 08 |
Lamat |
 |
Lamat |
Ek' (?) |
| 09 |
Muluk |
 |
Muluc |
(unknown) |
| 10 |
Ok |
 |
Oc |
(unknown) |
| 11 |
Chuwen |
 |
Chuen |
(unknown) |
| 12 |
Eb' |
 |
Eb |
(unknown) |
| 13 |
B'en |
 |
Ben |
C'klab |
| 14 |
Ix |
 |
Ix |
Hix (?) |
| 15 |
Men |
 |
Men |
(unknown) |
| 16 |
K'ib' |
 |
Cib |
(unknown) |
| 17 |
Kab'an |
 |
Caban |
Chab' (?) |
| 18 |
Etz'nab' |
 |
Etznab |
(unknown) |
| 19 |
Kawak |
 |
Cauac |
(unknown) |
| 20 |
Ajaw |
 |
Ahau |
Ajaw |
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NOTES:
- The sequence number of the named day in the Tzolk'in calendar
- Day name, in the standardized and revised orthography of the Guatemalan Academia de Lenguas Mayas
- An example glyph (logogram) for the named day. Note that for most of these several different forms are recorded; the ones shown here are typical of carved monumental inscriptions (these are "cartouche" versions)
- Day name, as recorded from 16th-century Yukatek Maya accounts, principally Diego de Landa; this orthography has (until recently) been widely used
- In most cases, the actual day name as spoken in the time of the Classic Period (c. 200-900) when most inscriptions were made is not known. The versions given here (in Classic Maya, the main language of the inscriptions) are reconstructed on the basis of phonological evidence, if available; a '?' symbol indicates the reconstruction is tentative.
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| Long Count |
| Since Calendar Round dates repeat every 18,980 days, approximately 52 solar years, the cycle repeats roughly once each lifetime, so a more refined method of dating was needed if history was to be recorded accurately. To specify dates over periods longer than 52 years, Mesoamericans used the Long Count calendar. |
| The Maya name for a day was k'in. Twenty of these k'ins are known as a winal or uinal. Eighteen winals make one tun. Twenty tuns are known as a k'atun. Twenty k'atuns make a b'ak'tun. |
| The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from the Mayan creation date 4 Ahaw, 8 Kumk'u (August 11, 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar or September 6 in the Julian calendar -3113 astronomical dating). But instead of using a base-10 (decimal) scheme like Western numbering, the Long Count days were tallied in a modified base-20 scheme. Thus 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25 and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40. As the winal unit resets after only counting to 18, the Long Count consistently uses base-20 only if the tun is considered the primary unit of measurement, not the k'in; with the k'in and winal units being the number of days in the tun. The Long Count 0.0.1.0.0 represents 360 days, rather than the 400 in a purely base-20 (vigesimal) count. |
| There are also four rarely used higher-order cycles: piktun, kalabtun, k'inchiltun and alautun. |
| Since the Long Count dates are unambiguous, the Long Count was particularly well suited to use on monuments. The monumental inscriptions would not only include the 5 digits of the Long Count, but would also include the two tzolk'in characters followed by the two haab' characters. |
| Misinterpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar was the basis for a popular belief that a cataclysm would take place on December 21, 2012. December 21, 2012 was simply the day that the calendar went to the next b'ak'tun, at Long Count 13.0.0.0.0. The date on which the calendar will go to the next piktun (a complete series of 20 b'ak'tuns), at Long Count 1.0.0.0.0.0, will be on October 13, 4772. |
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Table of Long Count units
Long Count
unit |
Long Count
period |
Days |
Approximate
Solar Years |
| 1 K'in |
|
1 |
|
| 1 Winal |
20 K'in |
20 |
|
| 1 Tun |
18 Winal |
360 |
1 |
| 1 K'atun |
20 Tun |
7,200 |
20 |
| 1 B'ak'tun |
20 K'atun |
144,000 |
394 |
| 1 Piktun |
20 B'ak'tun |
2,880,000 |
7,885 |
| 1 Kalabtun |
20 Piktun |
57,600,000 |
157,704 |
| 1 K'inchiltun |
20 Kalabtun |
1,152,000,000 |
3,154,071 |
| 1 Alautun |
20 K'inchiltun |
23,040,000,000 |
63,081,429 |
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East side of stela C,
Quirigua
with the
mythical creation
date of
13 baktuns,
0 katuns,
0 tuns,
0 uinals,
0 kins,
4 Ahau
8 Cumku
- August 11, 3114 BCE
in the proleptic
Gregorian calendar. |
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| [ Wikipedia - Maya Calendar ] |
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| See also: |
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