The Mesoamerican Calendar

if there is a single thing that United all of ancient mesoamerica together it was their use of a common calendar the Mesoamerican calendar is a calendar unlike any other in the world it actually wasn't even one calendar but a combination of several calendars working in conjunction with one another different cultures adapted the calendar in unique ways to suit their needs the calendar was central to Mesoamerican society and helped order everyday life it was so important to their identity that it even persists to this day if you happen to find yourself in Mexico or Guatemala you can still find communities that continue to keep the ancient calendar just as their ancestors did you may be thinking big deal what's so special about a calendar it's just 365 days well I'm glad you asked because we're gonna dive in and find out how the calendar worked before we can discuss how the calendar functioned we need to know how the people of Mesoamerica counted after all you can't have a calendar without counting and how the ancient Mesoamericans counted had a huge influence on the calendar so let me give you a very quick tutorial about how the ancient Mesoamerican is counted the people of Mesoamerica used of a decimal counting system that is a base 20 system what that means is that there's 20 individual based digits for a comparison in Western culture we use a base 10 system with 10 digits 0 through 9 when we reach 10 the tens column gains a value and the ones column restarts in base 20 there are 20 individual digits instead of 10 so why base 20 most experts will tell you that it likely comes from 10 fingers plus 10 toes all the human digits perhaps these are what the earliest people in Mesoamerica used to count their numbers it's very plausible to me but let's get back to counting so how does this base 20 system look well let's see how the Mesoamericans would have written these numbers to write any number you only need 3 symbols a dot a bar and a shell each dot represents a 1 and each bar represents a 5 a shell or sometimes a flower is used to represent a zero so counting to 20 would look like this you when you arrive at 20 a one goes into the tens or in our case the twenties column and a zero goes into the ones column when you arrive at 400 the hundreds column gains a value and so on and so forth so as an example let's write the number 1307 it would be a three in the 400s column a five in the 20s column and a seven in the ones column pretty simple right not too difficult to learn now that we know how people counted in mesoamerica let's look at the calendar in earnest as I mentioned earlier the Mesoamerican calendar is actually two calendars cycling together the first of these was the sacred 260 day calendar the Maya called this the sulking the Aztecs called it the Tonopah wali why 260 days you may be asking well no one's positive but there's a lot of speculation a popular theory is that 260 days are about nine months in our calendar is the length of one human pregnancy I've also seen archaeologists suggest that 260 days is an easy number to calculate eclipses with but regardless of how or why Mesoamerica went with 260 days the sacred calendar dictated their ritual and religious life each day had specific associations and portents in some Mesoamerican cultures people were actually named for the day that they were born in fact the earliest recorded usage of the sacred calendar doesn't even identify a date but instead the name of a person at the zapotec site of san jose Mageau ta in oaxaca mexico this individuals name is one earthquake presumably the day he was born unfortunately for one earthquake he's been cut open and he's bleeding to death sorry man the sacred calendar was made up of 13 months divided into 20 days each now you may think that this would look like 260 days laid out like the calendar hanging on your wall and you can be forgiven for assuming this it's how we conceptualize time but you are about to appreciate the elaborate and intricate way that the Mesoamericans tracked their days instead of having the same twenty days each month Mesoamericans would count 13 days and then reset back to one and continue through the month so for example let's look at a typical month in the sacred calendar the first day is one image the second to eke three akbah for con and so on until we arrive to 13 Ben instead of proceeding to 14 each the count restarts at 1:00 and we would have one ish even though we're still in the same month once we hit twenty days at seven a how the next month begins and the cycle continues at eight image this would continue until the end of two hundred and sixty days when we'd be back at one image now the sacred calendar was not used on its own as you can probably guess a 260 day calendar would not be very useful for tracking seasons and years but the ancient Mesoamericans understood this and they had a better calendar for that ticking right alongside the sacred calendar was the 365 day solar calendar also known by its maya name the Haab and also by its aztec name the super wali this solar calendar is often referred to as the vague year since it did not account for the leap year remember technically a year is not 365 days but roughly 365 and a quarter days now people were aware of this discrepancy between their calendar and the actual length of the solar year but they never opted to change their calendar people are often reluctant to change a calendar especially one that's very tied up in religion a good modern example of this is how Orthodox churches continue to use the Julian calendar instead of the more accurate Gregorian calendar the Haab is made up of 18 months with twenty days plus five extra days at the end of the year called the why of these five days were considered unlucky and people tried to avoid doing anything important on these days if you were born during the web it was not an auspicious beginning to your life unlike the sacred calendar the solar calendar works similarly to the Gregorian calendar which is also a solar calendar each month has twenty days like the sacred calendar but unlike the sacred calendar each has a consistent way of numbering the days let's look at a month in the solar calendar the first month pull the first of the month would be one Pope the second to Pope the third three Pope and so on once we arrive at the end of the month we don't use twenty Pope as you would expect instead you would seat the next month of the calendar whoa thus the 20th day of Pope would be called the seating of whoa so what happens when we bring the sacred calendar and the solar calendar together let's find out because this is what makes the Mesoamerican calendar so special these two calendars create a cycle that resets every 52 years that cycle is called the calendar round Mesoamericans were perfectly aware of this cycle and used it to count their years the way that they counted their years was called the year bearer system this worked by taking the day that the year would start on and making that the year with a number to indicate which year in the cycle it was by a mathematical quirk the solar calendar could only start on one of four days from the solar calendar eeeek money kept or Caban thus the first year in the cycle would be one eeeek followed by two money three AB four Caban five eeeek and so on at the end of the 52 year cycle everything would begin again with the same sacred calendar date solar calendar date and year thus nearly every date in a person's life was utterly unique and you could easily date an event in your own lifetime precisely the calendar round was ubiquitous across all of Mesoamerica with only a few exceptions so how would we read an entire date in this system let's take everything we've learned and describe a date now everything you've seen thus far has been in Maya and this time let's see a date as the Aztecs would have done just to change things up the first year in nahuatl would be one capital e one out of koala in the year one Kali or to make it easier one crocodile one rising tree in the year one house you can actually get further into this because other calendars tracked other numeration zuv time but for now let's keep this simple remember this date would not repeat again until another eighteen thousand eight hundred and ninety days after the fifty-two year cycle began again to the Aztecs the end of the 52 year cycle was a dreaded occasion where the fifth Sun could be destroyed if the gods were not placated and honored properly to make sure that this happened the Aztecs would perform the new fire ceremony and ensure that creation would continue just the same now you may have noticed something unusual about the calendar round it only tracks years in 52 year cycles before it resets so if someone told you that your city was founded on 8 a how 13 yash that doesn't tell you how long ago was founded it would be like someone telling you that the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was conquered in 21 that could mean 14 21 15 21 or 16 21 while the calendar round in year bearer system were excellent at tracking local events it wasn't very well equipped to record events that happened in the distant past for people who had little interest in recording such events this wasn't a problem if you're a simple everyman and all you need is a calendar for farming festivals and holidays the sacred calendar and solar calendar worked just fine but what if you're a king or a high priest and you need to record your accomplishments and to celebrate those of your ancestors for many cultures in Mexico the Aztecs included this was never enough of a concern to abandon or change the calendar round and the year bear system but for other people in Mesoamerica this wasn't doing the job as they started to record ever more distant historical vents they needed a way to fix historical dates with no ambiguity to solve this they created the long count the long count was a linear count of days that allowed people to precisely anchor the calendar date to a specific historical date if you've ever seen a my inscription you've almost certainly seen a date recorded in the long count whether you knew it or not although that the only users of the long count the Maya were definitely the most prolific users of it so how does the long count work the long count counts the days from a single start date that's right days not years keep that in mind the days are not counted individually but in groups of 20 remember in Mesoamerica you have to count in 20s not tens just like how we have years decades centuries millennia the Maya had their own periods based on their for Jessa mole system let's go through them and the Maya Long Count a single day is called a keen twenty Keynes make a we now 18 we now make a tune it should be noted that many people think of a tune as a year but it's only 360 days so it isn't a true solar year remember we're counting days not years twenty Tunes make up a cot tune and twenty cot Tunes make up a Bach tune there are actually higher counts beyond a Bach tune but those were seldom used and we won't discuss them here when you write a date in the long count you write it like this thus the date of January 1st 2020 would be written as 13 Bach tune 0 cot Tunes 7 Tunes to we now's 5:00 keen the anchor date of the calendar was August 14th 3114 BC e how the creators of the Long Count settled on that specific date is a mystery and will likely remain one forever the Maya believed that date to be the start of the 4th creation interestingly they didn't write that initial date as 0 but instead as 13 baktuns they would have said that 13 baktuns were completed during the previous creation by the way this is the origin of the whole Maya 2012 prophecy December 21st 2012 marked the completion of the 13th baktun back when we were all young there was almost a whole cottage industry in Maya studies focused around this question that I remember fueling a lot of programming on the History Channel but thankfully the industry has busted and we are all very much alive in reality there's evidence that the Maya didn't believe that the world would end in 2012 but that it would rather be an important anniversary of creation so there's that the origins of the Long Count are obscure the earliest Long Count date known is from Stila - at Chapa de Corzo with a Long Count date of seven bakhtin sixteen cartoon three tune - we now thirteen Keane or December 936 BCE the next oldest Long Count date is a few years later at Trey Capote days with a date of seven Bach tune sixteen cartoon 1616 we now eighteen Keane or September 3rd 32 BCE both of these sites are actually Olmec influence sites and as a result most scholars agree that the Long Count took its final form in the 1st century BC in what was then Olmec land now with all that in mind let's have a little fun with everything we've learned and examine an actual Maya Long Count inscription let's take a look at this inscription from the Maya city of Piedras Negras or as the Maya called it you'll keep now this will get a little complicated but it does a good job of showing how much information the Maya attract with their date inscriptions first we have the introductory glyph at the top this just informed us that we have a date going down from left to right in a zigzag pattern we have 9 Bach tunes 15 cartoons 10 Tunes then 0 we nows and 0 Keens the next glyph is the calendar round date 3a how the date written here is June 26 741 C II that's pretty straightforward but there more glyphs with supplementary information these glyphs get called unsurprisingly the supplemental series the next row begins with the ninth Lord of the night followed by the lunar series the next glyph shows that 29 days have elapsed since the new moon the next two rows say that this is a third lunation in a cycle of six consecutive lunations and that that lunation has 30 days who as you can see the Maya were very particular about how they recorded important events and if you think that I deliberately chose a complex inscription I assure you that this is a very normal even easy example there are others that are far more complicated as you saw on the previous inscription the Maya recorded lunar cycles they did such a good job of this that they could even predict lunar eclipses an eclipse was a very big deal and could have very profound consequences on the omens of that day so accurate was their lunar tracking that the Maya eventually figured out that 165 lunations or lunar cycles equals 4400 days to put that in perspective that calculates to one lunation every twenty nine point five three zero two zero days now modern calculations put that at twenty nine point five three zero five nine that is impressive and that's not even the only astronomical cycle that they tracked there were additional cycles for other planets and celestial bodies but those are topics for later speaking of cycles I hope you've noticed something very important about the Mesoamerican calendar that underscores the Mesoamerican understanding of time unlike our notions of time which are usually linear Mesoamerican cultures saw time as a cycle the calendar reflects this unique perception as I mentioned earlier the calendar was not just a count of days months years but a repeating cycle of the sacred and solar calendars one divine the other earthly every date on the calendar with its own omens and portents would return again and again through time when a king celebrated an achievement he could show where those achievements fit into the cycle of time and how they echoed those of history after all this I would guess that you are either in awe of the Mesoamerican calendar or thankful for the simplicity and familiarity of your own calendar either way I hope you've enjoyed this quick look at what I think is one of the most amazing calendars ever made take care and don't forget to Like and subscribe for more 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Channel: Ancient Americas

Views: 78,121

Keywords: mesoamerica, calendar, mesoamerican, ancient, maya, aztec

Id: t9E_eXE33JE

Length: 18min 46sec (1126 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 18 2020