Mayan calendar how does it work

Another calendar was thus devised, called the Long Count. The Long Count was based on the following units of time: a kin one day ; a uinal a month of 20 kins ; a tun a year of kins or 18 uinals ; a katun 20 tuns ; a baktun 20 katuns , or years.

Larger units included the pictun , the calabtun , the kinchiltun and the analtun. Each analtun was equivalent to 64 million years. The Long Count starts from the beginning of the current creation cycle, and corresponds to the present age.

The date of this creation is set at either B. This is the starting date for all subsequent counting - similar to our use of the birth of Christ as a starting point for modern historical dates. To indicate a date, the Maya calendar used five figures in this order: baktun, katun, tun, uin, kin.

This would be written as, for example: 9. This gives us a total of 1,, days approximately 3, solar years since the beginning of the last Creation, at the Maya calendar round position of 10 Chuen, 4 Kumku. This would be equivalent to a date sometime in our year A. One of the most important roles of the calendar was not to fix dates accurately in time, however, but to correlate the actions of Maya rulers to historic and mythological events.

The acts of gods performed in the days of myth were reenacted by Maya rulers, often on the anniversary of the original event - a date which was carefully calculated by Maya priests. The calendar was also used to mark the time of past and future happenings. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. The Aztec calendar, which was adapted from the Mayan calendar. See more Mayan pictures. Formative or Pre-classic - B. Cite This! Months in the Haab calendar: 1.

Pop 2. Zip 4. Zotz 5. Tzec 6. Xul 7. Yaxkin 8. Mol 9. Chen Yax Zac Ceh Mac Kankin Muan Pax Kayab Cumku The Tzolkin which translates to "count of days" is also known as the Divine Calendar. It represents the days in the Maya Sacred Round, and is used to determine the dates of religious days, harvests, and ceremonial events, such as weddings.

The days in each period are numbered from 1 to Each day is also given a name glyph from a sequence of 20 day names. The Long Count is an astronomical calendar which is used to track longer periods of time. The Mayans believed that the universe is destroyed and then recreated at the start of each universal cycle.

This belief caused the phenomenon described above, and it still inspires a myriad of prophecies about the end of the world. A date in the Mayan calendar is specified by its position in both the Tzolkin and the Haab calendars. This creates a total of 18, unique date combinations, which are used to identify each day within a cycle lasting about 52 years.

This period is called the Calendar Round. In practice, the date combinations are represented by two wheels rotating in different directions.