Maya calendar: Encyclopedia II - Maya calendar - General overview

Maya calendar - General overview

The most important of these calendars is one with a period of 260 days. This 260-day calendar was prevalent across all Mesoamerican societies, and is of great antiquity (almost certainly the oldest of the calendars). It is still used in some regions of Oaxaca, and amongst the Maya communities of the Guatemalan highlands. The Maya version is commonly known to scholars as the Tzolkin, or Tzolk'in in the revised orthography of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala. The Tzolkin combined with another 365-day calendar (known as the Haab, or Haab' ), to form a synchronised cycle lasting for 52 Haabs, called the Calendar Round. Smaller cycles of 13 days (the trecena) and 20 days (the veintena) were important components of the Tzolkin and Haab cycles, respectively.

A different form of 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 form, known as the Long Count, is based upon the number of elapsed days since a mythical starting point, and was capable of being extended to refer to any date far into the 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 a vigesimal one (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 place value, which instead represented 18 × 20, or 360 days, more closely approximating the sidereal year than would 20 × 20 = 400 days. It should be noted however that the cycles of the Long Count are independent of the solar year.

Many Maya Long Count inscriptions are supplemented by what is known as the Lunar Series, another calendric form which provides information on the lunar phase and position of the Moon in a half-yearly cycle of lunations.

A 584-day Venus cycle was also maintained, which tracked the appearance and conjunctions of Venus as the morning and evening stars. Many events in this cycle were seen as being inauspicious and baleful, and occasionally warfare was timed to coincide with stages in this cycle.

Other, less-prevalent or poorly-understood cycles, combinations and calendar progressions were also tracked. An 819-day count is attested in a few inscriptions; repeating series of 9- and 13-day intervals associated with different groups of deities, animals and other significant concepts are also known.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "General overview", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki