The Maya's First Known Calendar: The Round Calendar

The Maya were a people from Middle America, which includes modern Guatemala, Southern Mexico, and Northern Belize (Editors). The Maya civilization was considered to be “one of the most dominant indigenous societies of Mesoamerica,” (Maya). “The Maya excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making, and mathematics, and left behind an astonishing amount of impressive architecture and symbolic artwork,” (Maya). They also gave mankind the modern calendar (Jarus, Maya). The Mayans were a very advanced people, but one of the most important things in the Mayan culture was their religion/god worshipping rituals.

Since the beginning, time has been an important factor in our everyday lives. For example, the seasons, years and months were determined by the Ancient Calendars. The Ancient Calendars used Celestial bodies like the Sun, Moon, Planets and Stars to keep track of time. As the years go on the Calendar has been fixed to the Julian Calendar and to the Gregorian Calendar which we use today.

Maya calendars, mythology and astrology were integrated into a single system of belief. The Maya observed the sky and calendars to predict solar and lunar eclipses, the cycles of the planet Venus, and the movements of the constellations(a group of stars forming a recognizable pattern

The Mayan civilization became popular in the present because of their infamous Mayan Calendar. The Mayan civilization flourished on about 2600 BC and it prospered reaching the booming population of about 19 million. By 700 BC, they had already made writing of their own which they used to on creating their solar calendars which were carved using stones. According to the early Mayans, the creation of the world is dated on August 11, 3114 BC, which is where they count their calendar from, and the end of the world is on December 21, 2012. The early Mayans were said to be richer than other civilizations in terms of culture. Along with the Aztecs, they built pyramids which are larger than those in

The creation of calendars has helped different people of different cultures to reflect time within their cultures. However, the issue for these people was: How would they be able to use what is around them to give the passage of time to their people? Well since the beginning of time cultures like the Mayans, Egyptians, or to the time of Julius Caesar, have learned how to use scientific ways that fit under lunar, solar or lunisolar methods. And because of the methods used by these peoples, we were able to develop the calendar we use now, the Julian calendar.

Since the beginning, people have created calendars for order and to value life. Calendars have provided us a reference for measuring the passage of time throughout our existence. They have evolved from picking up more information from other ideas and ancient cultures. These include the Egyptian calendar, the Gregorian calendar (the one we use today) and the Mayan calendar. Historically, the creation of a calendar that provides both a satisfactory representation of time and practical value for the ordering of life has proved a vexing problem.

Using a base of 20, the system used combinations of dots, bars and shells to represent numbers.(Doc C) Ingenious thinking and mental effort were invested into creating this incredible philosophy of counting using different symbols. Exchange industry, goods, travel, what do all of these words have in common, they were all part of the complex Mayan Trade Routes. The trade routes stretched from Ecuador and Colombia to southwestern United States. They were completely isolated from their neighbours, so the journey to trade with them was treacherous. (Doc A) The significance today would be the fact that people were able to safely travel and explore new places, and meet new people/tribes along the way. Through meeting new people the Mayan culture was able to expand the land and area to which they lived. Copán, Tikal, El Mirador are all exquisite examples of Mayan architecture. In large Mayan cities it took around 80-130 full time workers and two-three months to build one home for a family. Over 2,500 Mayan city locations have been found suggesting that some cities had populations in the tens of thousands, with colossal stone pyramids, palaces, temples, ball courts and other ritual buildings. (Doc B) Mental and physical effort were used in the organization of all of the people and the carrying of the materials without any modern machines and creating the extraordinary

When most people think of the Mayans, they think end of the world prediction in 2012. Everyone knows the movie 2012 which portrayed the end of the world predicted by the Mayan calendar. What many do not know is that the Mayans developed three separate calendars; the Long Count, the Tzolk’in, and the Haab, which were represented by glyphs or pictures that were used in their daily lives in many different ways. The Mayans kept time in a very different way than we do today. The Mayans may not have invented the calendar, but they certainly developed it further, and still use their version today.

The Mayan civilization existed in what today is Central America, between 250 AD and 900 AD. They grew to have more than 40 cities with populations ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 people per city. These facts make their demise a complete mystery to the rest of us who have live after this period and know of their great innovations in subjects including Astrology, Architecture, Religion and Agriculture.

The Mayan Civilization at its height was one of the greatest civilization to ever reign on the planet. Their advances in astronomy and mathematics well in advance has helped present civilizations to prosper. But one of the great questions is what happened to the Mayans? Why did they collapse? What caused them to collapse? It is a question that had gone unanswered for decades until some of the worlds great historians and scientist finally concluded to three reasons why the Mayan Civilization collapsed. The Mayans Collapse was fast and occurred due to Deforestation and Climate Change, Overpopulation, and Internal and Exterior Rivalry.

* The Mayas created a written language, a numerical system, an accurate calendar, and an advanced agricultural

The short documentary, “Cracking the Maya Code” recounted the long journey to uncovering the meaning behind the Maya hieroglyphs. The glyphs were so hard to decipher because of the complexity and originality of the writing system. Another thing that added to the difficulty of deciphering the visuals was the Mayan scribes’ love of substitutions. The lack of understanding of the language and the forms of the glyphs also contributed to the length of the journey to decipherment. The lack of technology also most likely played a major role in the length of the journey. If it wasn’t for the scholars’ perseverance, determination, research, and their ability to make connections and predictions which ultimately led to the major discoveries, we would still be working to uncover the meaning behind the Mayan glyphs to this day.

What Mayan writing seems to represent is a sacred language used only by the elite, initiated, and known only by them. The language of the Mayan was identical with that of the Yucatan Indians, given the fact that writing was identical. The Maya kept records on large stone monuments called stelae. They used the Steele to record important dates and to take note of great events in the lives of their rulers.(Price 91)They also used the stelae to recount the positions of the “heavenly bodies”_ particularly the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter.(Miller)

The Aztec people also made two different types of calendars. One was the agricultural calendar, and the other was the calendar of the gods. The agricultural calendar was a lot like the calendar we use today. It had 365 days and recorded the seasons. Every year had 18 months, and each month had 20 days. The 5 extra days were the unlucky days of the Aztecs. The second calendar had 260 days. There were 20 signs and 13 numbers. Each god should have specific weeks and days. They thought that this would make it fair for all of their

That need for structure is probably the reason that the Mayans developed such an amazingly accurate calendar. They also developed a complex style of hieroglyphic writing that we have not fully deciphered. Through their knowledge of astronomy and mathematics they calculated the lunar cycle, predicted eclipses, and formulated a unique calendar system was very accurate. Their calendar was only one day off every 6000 years. That makes it more accurate than our calendar today (Hooker 6). Two fundamental