Haab Calendar

So when last we met our intrepid Mayanist, he was explaining calendars. Recall that we have a calendar that is composed of separate components that work together, namely days of the week which run in a cycle, and dates which run in a separate cycle. The Mayans also had calendars that ran independently. I mentioned we would look at the Haab, Tzolkin and the Long Count calendars. First up, Haab.


The Haab calendar is very close to our Gregorian calendar. It has 18 months instead of 12, and 20 days per month. That leaves us about 5 days short of a full solar year. So the Mayans throw 5 "free days" into the last month. (By the way these 5 extra days were considered bad luck, and no Mayans would normally work nor wed during them). So this calendar now matches a solar year of the earth. The month names, while not critical to us are too much fun to pass up. Pop, Wo, Zip, Zotz, Zek, Xul,Yaxkin,Mol, Chen, Yax, Zak,Keh,Mak, Kankin,Muan, Pax, Kayab, and Kumku. (I am using common spelling, that differs a bit from the labels on the sample below.) And remember those 5 extra days at the end of the last month? We call them, Wayeb.








In the Haab calendar, each day is noted by giving the day and month. So the first day of the first month is 0 Pop, followed by 1 Pop, 2 Pop, etc. all the way to 19 Pop, which is then followed by 0 Wo, 1 Wo, 2 Wo and so on.

The Mayans didn't really track of how many Haabs rolled by, they used the Long Calendar for calculations like that.

Next up, Tzolkin!


J.T. Turner, Mayanist