Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The relationship between the cities and the land, drawn up along feudal lines, was at
the heart of Maya life.
Peasant farmers
supported the ruling class by providing labour
and food, and in return the elite provided leadership, direction, protection and, above
all, else the security of their knowledge of calendrics and supernatural prophecy. This
knowledge was thought to be the basis of successful agriculture, and the ruler-priests
were relied upon to divine the appropriate time to plant and harvest.
In turn, the cities themselves became organized into a hierarchy, with at times a single
city, such as El Mirador, Tikal or Calakmul controlling smaller sites across a vast area.
A complex structure of
alliances
and rivalries bound the various sites together in an
endless round of competition and conflict, and there were frequent outbursts of
open
warfare
. The structure of the alliances can be traced through emblem-glyphs. Only
those of the main centres are used in isolation, while the names of smaller sites are used
in conjunction with those of their larger patrons.
The Maya calendar
For both practical and mystical reasons the Maya developed a highly sophisticated
understanding of arithmetic, calendrics and astronomy, all of which they believed gave
them the power to predict events. Great occasions were interpreted on the basis of the
Maya calendar
, and it was this precise understanding of time that gave the ruling elite
its authority. The majority of carving, on temples and stelae, records the date at which
rulers were born, ascended to power, sacrificed captives and died.
The basis of all Maya
calculation
was the vigesimal counting system, which used
multiples of twenty. Just three symbols were used in writing - a shell to denote zero, a
dot for one and a bar for five - which you can still see on many stelae. In calculations
the Maya used a slightly different notation known as the head-variant system, in which
each number from one to twenty was represented by the head of a deity.
When it comes to the Maya
calendar
things start to get more complex. The basic unit
of the Maya calendar was the day, or
kin
, followed by the
winal
, a group of twenty
kins
roughly equivalent to our month. In an ideal vigesimal system (as Maya arithmetic
was) the next level would be four hundred
kins
- but for marking the passing of a
period approximating a year the Maya used the
tun
, comprising eighteen (rather than
twenty)
winals
, plus a closing month of five days, the
Uayeb
,
a total of 365 days. This
so-called “
vague year
”, or
haab
, made it a very close approximation of the annual cycle,
though of course the Maya elite knew that the solar year was a fraction over 365 days.
Beyond this unit however, the passing of time was ordered in multiples of twenty, with
the
katun
being twenty
tuns
.
he 260-day
sacred almanac
was used to calculate the timing of ceremonial events
and as a basis for prophecy. Each day (
kin
) was associated with a particular deity that
had strong influence over those born on that particular day. This calendar wasn't
divided into months but had 260 distinct day names. (This system is still in use among
the Cakchiquel in the highlands of Guatemala, who name their children according to
its structure and celebrate fiestas according to its dictates.) These first two calendars
operated in parallel so that once every 52 years the new day of the solar year coincided
with the same day in the 260-day almanac, a powerful meeting that marked the end of
one “
calendar round
”
and the beginning of the next.
MAYA TIME
THE UNITS
1
kin
= 24 hours
20
kins
= 1
winal
, or 20 days
18
winals
= 1
tun
, or 360 days
20
tuns
= 1
katun
, or 7200 days
20
katuns
= 1
baktun
, or 144,000 days
20
baktun
= 1
pictun
, or 2,880,000 days
20
pictuns
= 1
calabtun
, or 57,600,000 days
20
calabtuns
= 1
kinchiltun
, or
1,152,000,000 days
20
kinchiltuns
= 1
alautun
, or
23,040,000,000 days
