Mayan Calendar System
Created | Updated Feb 23, 2005
The universe came into being on August 13th, 3114BC. That was day zero according to the Mayan Long Count, the start of time, the date all other days are reckoned from.
The Mayans
Not much is known about the Mayan civilisation, which flourished in the Yucatan Peninsula between about 300BC to 900AD, part of our knowledge about them concerns their calendars. The Mayans used around seventeen different calendars to divide up their time. They were based on the Stars and planets, Earth and Moon, and were very complicated. The Mayans are possibly the only civilisation to count from zero- our calendar starts with the first of January, January 1. However, they had zero days at the beginning of theirs.
Their Calendars
The main calendars which would have been used by the general population were the Haab, the Tun-Uc and the Tzol'kin, based on the cycles of the Earth, Moon and Pleiades respectively. Here are some of the calendar systems that the Maya used.
The Long Count
The long count (as it is called by modern archaelogists) set the date from when the Mayans thought that time began, in 3114BC. Using the Long count it was possibly for the Maya to date any event, for example the construction of monument, an exact amount of time from when they thought the universe began. However, the Long Count wasn't just a string of days- they were grouped into other units too:
| Unit | No. of Smaller units | No. of days |
|---|---|---|
| 1 K'in | -- | 1 day |
| 1 Winal | 20 K'in | 20 days |
| 1 Tun | 18 Uinal | 360 days |
| 1 K'atun | 20 Tun | 7,200 days |
| 1 Bak'tun | 20 K'atun | 144,000 days |
| 1 Great Cycle | 13 Bak'tun | 1,872,000 days |
The nearest unit to a year the Long Count has is the Tun, 360 days. Because this is five days out from the solar year of 365.25 days the Long count isn't practical for "everyday" usage.
The Haab
This was the civil calendar. It was split into 18 20-day months, like a Tun, but it had five 'phantom' days at the end of the year to make it work in line with the Earth's rotation around the Sun. The days of the months in the Haab were numbered from zero to 19, rather than one to 20 as they might have been if it were a Western calendar. The Maya believed that a different god ruled over each month. The zero day of a new month was when one god passed his burden of time to the next- this took a whole day, rather than being instatanious as it is in our calendar. During the five 'phantom' days at the end of the year, the people wouldn't wash themselves, or do any work in case it went wrong.
The Tzol'kin
This calendar was based on the 26000 year cycle of the Pleiades, but lasted 260 days. The numbers 13 and 20 were both sacred to the Mayans: their were 13 gods of their 'upper world' and 20 represented man. This had a very complicated counting system- there were 20 day names and 13 numbers, which went together. So to start with, the numbers one to 13 went with the first 13 days. Then numbers one through seven were paired with days 14 through 20. After that day one came again, this time paired with the number eight.
