The Long Count

Well we have had quite the tour of Mayan Calendars, but we wrap it up with this blog post. The Long Count is actually a simple idea. We simply pick a date in the distant past, and start counting the days since then. The start date is sometimes called the day of 'creation", but there does not seem to be any evidence the Mayans actually believed all creation started on that date. Rather it is just a way to keep time. Think of it rather as a starting point, like January 1st in the year 1 started the Gregorian Calendar.

Since we have a start date, we could make any date later after the start one big number. But the Mayans loved integrals of 20, and that is important to remember. Think of a cars odometer. Fresh from the factory we mights see it read 0.0.0.0.0. After it is driven for awile, it might read 6.5.4.1.2. This tell us that it has traveled 65,412 miles, or we can thing of it as 6 ten thousands, 5 thousands, 4 hundreds, 1 ten and 2 miles. So, chunks of 10's.


Well think of the Long Count as expressing the passage of time like that, but expressing it  in chunks of 1, 20, 360, 7,200 and 14,400.(More about the odd last two numbers later). So, in the Long Count, day 1 is 0.0.0.0.0. Day 2 is 0.0.0.0.1, and keeps going until the first slot hits 0.0.0.0.19. The next day, the Count is 0.0.0.1.0. The 1 tells us 20 days have passed. So a number like 0.0.0.11.14 tells us that 11 counts of 20, and 14 days have passed since the start.

OK now it gets tricky, (yeah, I know its already tricky, just stay with me). You see the second slot, rather than going to a maximum of 19, only goes to 17. (remember, we count the 0 as a day, so this reflects 18 days, though it says 17). This is so the third slot reflects almost a year, 360 days. So a number of 0.0.1.0.0 shows us 360 days have gone by. the next two slots show multiples of twenty, so if we look at the numkbers in order we see how many single days up to 19, how many 20 day sets up to 360, how many 360 day sets up to 7,200, (that is 20 X 360), and how many sets of 144,000 (20 X 7,200).

Each slot has a name, listed below.






Or we can put the name in the proper slot on our Mayan odometer:




To break it down a bit more:

20 kins	equal	1 uinal or 20 days
18 uinals	equal	1 tun or 360 days
20 tuns	equal	1 katun or 7,200 days
20 katuns	equal	1 baktun or 144,000 days

Got all that? OK, now many scientists have tried to figure out just what start date this calendar used. There are several theories, but most scientists now lean to the ancient starting date of the Long Count as being August 14, 3114 BC, or to be politically correct, BCE (Before Common Era).But some say it was August 13, some August 11, and some September 6. These are supported by some astronomical events that the Long Count dates were given on artifacts.

Next time, why we will be fine on Doomsday!

J.T. Turner, Mayanist

The Lords of the Night

OK so we have touched on the Tzolkin and Haab calendars. Before we get to the Long Count calendar, (which is the last one, aren't you glad?), let's touch upon the Lords of the Night.

Simply, every day is associated with a creature known as a Lord of the Night. there are nine Lords, and they take turns watching over the days. You will recall the Mayans are all about cycles, so these nine Lords work in a rotation. Yes, that means we have yet another cycle in the Mayan time keeping world.

We do not have names for the Lords of the Night, those have been lost over the years. But we do have glyphs of each of them, and scholars simple have called them G1-G9. (Not to be confused with the Aztec Nine lords of the Night, which have names). Collectively they are known as bolon ti ku, "Nine of them".









Attractive, no? So the Lords of the night simply run in order for nine days and then restart.

And now we will wrap up our calendar discussion with the Long Count next blog.

                                           J.T. Turner
                                            Mayanist

The Tzolkin Calendar

After a long hiatus, we are back to blogging! We are looking at the various Mayan calendars, their purpose and use. We took a look at the Haab, now lets consider the Tzolkin.

The Tzolkin is really two independant calendars that run side by side. the first cycle is  one of 13 days, numbered 1-13. The other cycle is 20 days, each day has a name of its own.( Think of our calendar, Monday Tuesday Wednesday, that is similar to the 20 day calendar). Each day, both the 13 day calendar and the 20 day calendat advance by one. If it were Monday March 5th, and we already knew it was march, we might say Monday the 5th or Monday 5. Then Tuesday 6, Wednesday 7 and so on. For the Mayans the number part went to 13 and restarted, the name of the day went thru the list of 20 and then restarts.

Hopefully you can count to 13, so you get that part of the calendar. We will call that part of the calendar tones. The names of days are below with the rough translation of the word.
  Imix-crocodile
 Ik-wind
 Akbal-night
Kan-seed
 Chikchan-sperpent
Kimi-transformation
Manik-deer
Lamat-star
Muluk-offering
Ok-dog
 Chuen-monkey
 Eb-road
 Ben-read
 Ix-jaguar
 Men-eagle
 Kib-wisdom
 Kaban-earth
 Etznab-flint
 Kawak-storm
 and Ahau- sun. 









Now lets get a quick visual as to how these two cycles work together.











Look at the tones, and you will see the Mayan representation for numbers we have discusses. One dot for one, two for two, etc. Then a bar represents 5, 2 bars is ten. Using those combinations, we see the inner circle that goes up to 13.


So if we started at 1 Imix, that would show the first number and the Name of the first day. It would then run through the cycle, with the numbers turning over at 13 and the names turning over after Ahau. If we continued on in that fashion, it would take 260 days for the calendar to get all the way back to the start of 1 Imix. In some illustrations, the days are called kin, so in the illustration above, we see the wheels for 260 kin or days.

OK so that is 2 major calendars out of the way. Before we get to the Long Count, we will visit a method or practice of the Mayans involving assigning a creature to each day. So, next up, Lord of the Night!


J.T. Turner, Mayanist

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

Calendars Galore!

I have spoken of the Mayan calendars in several posts here,but thought a good recap was in order.

First, remember there is more than one Mayan Calendar. There are several, and sometimes they were used side by side. Imagine having 3,4,5 calendars all clicking off time independently of the each other!

For our purposes we often compare the Mayan calendar with the Gregorian calendar that is in use in much of the world. Both the Mayan and Gregorian calendars are tied to the idea of cycles, or simply a sequence that happens over and over.The Mayans used many celestial events in their calendars, as they saw movements in the sky as recurring.The Gregorian calendar uses the cycle of a week, Monday through Sunday, over and over, We also use 12 months, with days within a month. But the days of the week, and the Months/date run interdependently of each other. Say we have a Monday, January1. Tuesday January2, Wednesday January 3 and so on. When we get to Sunday, the next day the week starts over, but the date keeps counting, independently. With me so far? Good!

Mayan calendars also have independent components.running at the same time, just more of them. 3 are considered the most common. Our next few blogs will take on each of them:

Haab- 365 day calendar (18 months long each month 20 days, with 5 days added to the last month to make a solar year).
Tzolkin- 265 day calendar (actually 2 calenders, running side by side).

 These above two calendars can be combined, and are referred to as the Calendar Round, which has a cycle of 52 years.
Long Count-Just a way of writing the number of days that have gone by since a particular event, thousands of years ago.

Next up, a look at each of the three calendars listed above.


J.T. Turner, Mayanist

Primary sources

Hello! And sorry for the gap in posts!

In historical research, Primary Sources are of critical importance. They are the documents or items that originate a piece of history. Think of the Declaration of Independence. How do you know that the copy you find on the internet is right? Well, go have a look at the original, the primary source.

Last time in this blog, I mentioned just a few primary sources that actually mention the Doomsday date of the Mayan calendar. We spoke about the Jaguar Prophet, and how that passage is murky at best. Another primary source for the Doomsday date is located in southern Tabasco Mexico, at the Tortuguero site. The site dates to the 7th century CE, and has a series of inscriptions for a ruler there at that time. For us, we are interested in Monument 6, which does indeed refer to the b'ak'tun 13 (doomsday). Sadly, part of the inscription has been defaced, so we have just a partial rendering. Mark Van Stone has given the most complete translation:

Tzuhtz-(a)j-oom u(y)-uxlajuun pik

The Thirteenth [b'ak'tun] will end

(ta) Chan Ajaw ux(-te') Uniiw.

(on) 4 Ajaw, the 3rd of Uniiw [3 K'ank'in].

Uht-oom Ek'-...

Black ...[illegible]...will occur.

Y-em(al)...Bolon Yookte' K'uh ta-chak-ma...

(It will be) the descent(?) of Bolon Yokte' K'uh to the great (or "red"?)...[illegible]...^[22]

We really know little about the god,  Bolon Yokte' K'uh.He is elsewhere mentioned as a god of war, conflict, and the underworld. In some stela, he is portrayed with a rope around his neck, or an incense bag, which some take to mean his being a sacrifice, specifically a sacrifice to end a time period. (OK that would support the 2012/World Ending camp). But I have to point out that the translation is far from complete, and that Bolon Yokte' K"uh was already and ancient god when the Tortuguero site was active, and he appears to have been an unfamilar god even then. Just look at line 3. Black...something....will occur. Black death? Black Night? Black Sabbath? Black is the color of my true loves hair? Could be anything!

So to recap, most of the furor around 2012 is created simply by modern interpretation of the Long Count Calendar, with many authorities  disagreeing on the nature of the end date. And as discussed in the last 2 posts, there is little or no primary source material that points to 12/21/12 as a doomsday. Surely if that is the end of the world, the Mayans, who were great predictors of events, would have left more indicators of that ultimate event!

J.T. TURNER
MAYANIST

Jaguar Prophets

OK, OK, I know this is a rather dramatic picture above, and it is not really the Jaguar Prophet I mention in this post, but I liked it! It is called Jaguar Moon, and I am using it.

Despite all the hurly burly that surrounds the supposed doomsday of 12/21/12, if we look at factual Mayan sources, there are only a couple that even mention it.  The end of the Long Count calendar is mostly a non-event to ancient and contemporary Mayans. Let us look at a few source materials that do mention the date.

There is a group of prophecies that were made after the Spanish conquest of the Mayans that were translated to a sort of abbreviated Spanish.These prophesies were given by Chilam Balam, or the Jaguar Prophet. I have to say there is a lot of argument over the translations and meanings of the passages in the documents. But one passage does indeed mention the 13th b'ak'tun, which is the doomsday date. I won't reproduce the passage here, as few of you read ancient Mayan, (;)) but an archeaoastronomer, Maud Worcester Makenson, has translated the passage to mean the following :

"Presently B'ak'tun 13 shall come sailing, figuratively speaking, bringing the ornaments of which I have spoken from your ancestors.........Then the god will come to visit his little ones. Perhaps 'After Death' will be the subject of his discourse."

As you can see, that translation can easily be manipulated by Doomsday theorists into talking about the end of the world. But more recent translations suggest that the Doomsday date is not even mentioned in the prophecies. Another translator takes the passage to mean:

.                      "...like the coming of 13 sail-ships. When the captains dress themselves, your fathers will be taken".

Again if I want to read Doomsday into this I could. But more likely it could have referred to the Spanish conquest of the Mayans. Or it could be the lyrics to a David Bowie song .

I mention this just to show how source texts can easily be corrupted by sensationalists for their own purposes. Next post we will look at another source for the widespread doomsday theory. 

J.T. Turner

Mayanist