THE MAYA CALENDAR
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The Maya didn't invent the calendar, but developed the calendar further and it's still in use in some Maya communities today. They understood different calendars based on the cosmos.
The Maya Calendar consists of separate corresponding calendars. We will focus on the Long Count, the Tzolkin, the Tun-Uc and the Haab . Time is cyclical in the calendars. The Haab The Haab is a 365 day solar calendar which is divided into 18 months of 20 days each and one month which is only 5 days long. The Tzolkin The divine calendar is also known as the Sacred Round or the Tzolkin which means “the distribution of the days”. It is a 260-day calendar, with 20 periods of 13 days used to determine the time of religious and ceremonial events. Each day is numbered from one to thirteen, and then repeated. The Tun-Uc The Tun-Uc is the moon calendar that uses 28-day cycles. This moon cycle is broken down into four smaller cycles of 7 days each. The Long Count The Long Count is an astronomical calendar which was used to track longer periods of time, what the Maya called the “universal cycle”. Each such cycle is calculated to be 2,880,000 days (about 7885 solar years). The Long Count Calendar came to an end on the Solstice on December 21, 2012. Many people believed that this would be the end of the world but the end of the Maya Long Count calendar is actually followed by the start of a new cycle. |