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Mayan Calendar


Mayan calendar

A traditional Mayan calendar


Most people around the globe look at some form of a calendar every single day. ­Business executives check to see when their meetings are scheduled. The busy mom confirms soccer practices and piano lessons. College students ensure that their papers are turned in on time and they have plenty of time to study for their history exams. For the people of ancient Maya, calendars were just as important to daily life as they are to people today. In this article, we'll look at how the Mayan calendar came to be and the meaning behind each type of calendar the Mayans created. First, let's get a little background on the Mayans.

The Mayans originated in a region called Mesoamerica, or Middle America. This region lies in between Mexico and South America and was home to many other cultures, including the Aztec, Olmec, Teotihuacan and Toltec. The Mayans lived in what are today's Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and Southern Mexico (Yucatan, Campeche, Quintana Roo Tabasco and Chiapas).

Mesoamericans began writing during the mid-Pre-classic period. The Mayans were the first to keep any sort of historical record, and the beginnings of the calendar were born. The Mayans used stelae, or stone monuments, to carve their civil events, calendars and astronomy knowledge. They also recorded their religious beliefs and mythology on pottery.

The Mayans weren't the first ever to use a calendar -- there were ancient calendars in use throughout civilizations worldwide -- but they did create four different calendars. Depending on their needs, the Mayans used different calendars to record each event, either alone, or in some combination of two calendars.

On the next page, we'll take a look at the first calendar used by the Mayans, the Tzolk'in calendar.

Mayan history ­is broken into three periods:

  • Formative or Pre-classic - 2000 B.C. until A.D. 300
  • Classic - A.D. 300 until A.D. 900
  • Post-classic - A.D. 900 until the Spanish Inquisition in the 1400s

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