Maya Heritage - Guatemala - page 573

The Maya Calendar
The ancient Maya's astronomical observations and calculations were uncannily accurate
and time was, in fact, the basis of the Maya religion. Perhaps the best analog to the Maya
calendar is the gears of a mechanical watch, where small wheels mesh with larger wheels,
which in turn mesh with other sets of wheels to record the passage of time.
Tzolkin, Cholq'ij or Tonalamatl
The two smallest wheels were two cycles: one of 13 days and another of 20 days. As these
two 'wheels' meshed, the passing days received unique names. The two small 'wheels'
thus created a larger 'wheel' of 260 days, called a tzolkin, cholq'ij or tonalamatl .
Vague Year (Haab)
Another set of wheels in the Maya calendar comprised 18 'months' of 20 days each, which
formed the basis of the solar year or haab (or ab' ). Eighteen months, each of 20 days,
equals 360 days, a period known as a tun; the Maya added a special omen-filled five-day
period called the uayeb at the end of this cycle in order to produce a solar calendar of 365
days.
Calendar Round
The huge wheels of the tzolkin and the haab also meshed and repeated every 52 solar years,
a period called the Calendar Round. The Calendar Round was the dating system used not
only by the Maya but also by the Olmecs, Aztecs and Zapotecs of ancient Mexico.
To translate a date using the Maya calendar, visit the Maya Date Calculator at www.mayan-calendar.com/
calc.html .
Long Count
The Calendar Round has one serious limitation: it only lasts 52 years. Hence the Long
Count, which the Maya developed around the start of the Classic period.
The Long Count uses the tun , but ignores the uayeb . Twenty tuns make a katun and 20
katuns make a baktun . Curiously for us today, 13 baktuns (1,872,000 days, or 5125
Gregorian solar years) form something called a Great Cycle, and the first Great Cycle