The Classic Maya civilization of southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize flourished in the fourth through tenth centuries AD (according to orthodox history). Today, not much is known about the Mayas or their neighbours in Central/South America; unfortunately, the early Christian conquerers destroyed most of the ancient records of the native American cultures.

The Maya numbering system used a vigesimal (based on 20) place-value number system, analogous to our decimal place-value number system.

The Classic Maya civilization was unique and left us a way to incorporate higher-dimensional knowledge of time and creation. By tracking the movements of the Moon, Venus, and other heavenly bodies, the Mayas realized that there were cycles in the Cosmos. From this came their reckoning of time, and a calendar that accurately measures the solar year to within minutes.

For the Maya there was a time for everything, and everything had it's place in time. The priests could interpret the heavens and calendar. As the result they could control the daily activities of the populace. Knowing when to plant, when to harvest, the rainy and dry seasons, and so on gave them total power and control. Their comprehension of time, seasons, and cycles was immense.

The Maya understood 17 different calendars based on the Cosmos. Some of these calendars go back as far as ten million years and are so complex that an astronomer, astrologer, geologist, and mathematician would be needed just to work out the calculations. The Mayas also made tables predicting eclipses and the orbit of the planet Venus.

The Tzolk'in is the most important and influencial of the calendars. The other calendars that are most important to beings of earth are the Haab and the Tun-Uc.

• The Tzolk'in is the Sacred calendar of the Maya and is based on the cycles of the Pleiades. Tzolk'in in Mayan means "sequence of days." The cycle of the Pleiades uses 26,000 years, but is reflected in the calendar we are using by encompassing 260 days. It uses the sacred numbers 13 and 20. The 13 represents the numbers and 20 represents the sun/glyphs. The Tzolk'in has four smaller cycles called seasons of 65 days each guarded by the four suns of Chicchan, Oc, Men and Ahau. There are also Portal days within the Tzolk'in that create a double helix pattern using 52 days and the mathematics of 28. This sacred calendar is still being used for divination by the traditional Maya all over the Yucatan, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras.
  The Tzolk'in calendar was meshed with a 365-day solar cycle called the Haab. The calendar consisted of 18 months with 20 days (numbered 0-19) and a short "month" of only 5 days that was called the Wayeb and was considered to be a dangerous time. It took 52 years for the Tzolk'in and Haab calendars to move through a complete cycle.
• The Haab is based on the cycles of earth. It has 360 + 5 days, totalling 365 days. The Haab uses 18 months with 20 days in each month. There is a 19th month called a Wayeb and uses the 5 extra days. Each month has its own name/glyph. Each day uses a sacred sun/glyph.
• The Tun-Uc is the moon calendar. It uses 28-day cycles that mirror the women's moon cycle. This cycle of the moon is broken down into 4 shorter cycles, of approximately 7 days each. These shorter cycles are the four phases of the moon cycle.

Archaeologists claim that the Maya began counting time as of year 3114 B.C.
This is called the zero year and is likened to January 1, 1 AD. All dates in the Long Count begin there, so the date of the beginning of this time cycle is written 0-0-0-0-0. 13 cycles of 394 years will have passed before the next cycle begins, which is in year 2012 A.D. (13-0-0-0-0).

Glyphs and names of the Kin or Maya days:

Day	Glyph	Name	Day	Glyph	Name	Day	Glyph	Name	Day	Glyph	Name
1		Imix	6		Cimi	11		Chuen	16		Cib
2		Ik	7		Manik	12		Eb	17		Caban
3		Akbal	8		Lamat	13		Ben	18		Etznab
4		Kan	9		Muluc	14		Ix	19		Cauac
5		Chicchan	10		Oc	15		Men	20		Ahau

The Maya numbering system is as follows:

Example: (3 + 5 = 8)

Glyphs and names of the Winal or Maya months :

Glyph	Month - keywords	Glyph	Month - keywords
	1. Pop (11 Aug - 30 Aug) Venus morning star, Mother Earth.		11. Zac (27 Feb - 17 Mar) Ray of the sun, healing with hands.
	2. Uo (31 Aug - 19 Sep) Good behavior, solar cross, strightness.		12. Ceh (18 Mar - 6 Apr) Woodpecker, Earth, rationalizing, clever but practical liberal.
	3. Zip (20 Sep - 9 Oct) Obsidian butterfly, vulture, serious, deep, wise, realistic.		13. Mac (7 Apr - 26 Apr) Monkey, judge of human kind, wisdom, quickeness of the mind.
	4. Zotz (10 Oct - 29 Oct) Dominance, organized, creating at night.		14. Kankin (27 Apr - 16 May) Tree of life, advice giver, firmly grounded to earth.
	5. Tzec (30 Oct - 18 Nov) Maya symbol of intellectual balance, rejects negativity.		15. Muan (17 May - 5 Jun) Director of the Universe, eagle, blue color.
	6. Xul (19 Nov - 9 Dec) Baby jaguar, Venus evening star.		16. Pax (6 Jun - 25 Jun) Music, arts, literature, sensible personality.
	7. Yaxkin (9 Dec - 28 Dec) Solar flow, connected to Mother Earth, center of the Universe, green Sun.		17. Kayab (26 Jun - 15 Jul) Turtle, Milky Way, feedom, independence.
	8. Mol (29 Dec - 17 Jan) Red color, paw of the jaguar, pampered, surrounded by all the planets.		18. Kumku (16 Jul - 4 Aug) Equity symbol, capable of sharing without selfishness.
	9. Chen (18 Jan - 6 Feb) Infinite commencement, unity, god of flowers, clever, demonstrative.		19. Wayeb (5 Aug - 10 Aug) Discrepant, antagonistic, unequal, Creator of the Universe.
	10. Yax (7 Feb - 26 Feb) Life signs, Mother Earth, water, green.

Maya calendar basics

The Mayas used three different calendar systems (and some variations within the systems). The three systems are known as the Tzolk'in (the sacred calendar), the Haab (the civil calendar) and the long count system.

The Tzolk'in is a cycle of 260 days and the Haab is a cycle of 365 days.
The Tzolk'in cycle and the Haab cycle were combined to produce a cycle of 18,980 days, known as the calendar round. 18,980 days is a little less than 52 solar years.

The "calendar round" is like two gears that intermesh, one smaller than the other. One of the "gears" is called the Tzolk'in, or sacred round. The other is the Haab, or calendar round. The smaller wheels together represent the 260-day sacred round; the inner wheel, with the numbers 1 to 13, meshes with the glyphs for the 20 day names on the outer wheel. A section of a large wheel represents part of the 365-day year - 18 months of 20 days each (numbered 0-19). The five days remaining at year's end were considered evil. In the diagram, the day shown is read 4 Ahua 8 Kumku. As the wheels turn in the direction of the arrows, in four days it will read 8 Kan 12 Kumku. Any day calculated on these cycles would not repeat for 18,980 days - 52 years.

Thus the Mayas could not simply use a Tzolk'in/Haab date to identify a day within a period of several hundred years because there would be several days within this period with the same Tzolk'in/Haab date.

The Mayas overcame this problem by using a third dating system that enabled them to identify a day uniquely within a period of 1,872,000 days - approximately 5,125.36 solar years. To do this they used a vigesimal (based on the number 20) place-value number system, analogous to our decimal place-value number system.

The Mayas used a pure vigesimal system for counting objects but modified this when counting days. In a pure vigesimal system each place in a number is occupied by a number from 0 to 19, and that number is understood as being multiplied by a power of 20. Thus in such a system:

2.3.4 = 2*20*20 + 3*20 + 4*1 = 864
11.12.13 = 11*20*20 + 12*20 + 13*1 = 4653 and
1.3.5.7 = 1*20*20*20 + 3*20*20 + 5*20 + 7*1 = 9307

When counting days, however, the Mayas used a system in which the first place (as usual) had a value of 1, the second place had a value of 20, but the third place had a value not of 400 (20*20) but of 360 (18*20). (This may have been due to the fact that 360 is close to the length of the year in days.) The value of higher places continued regularly with 7,200 (20*18*20), 144,000 (20*20*18*20), etc. In such a system:

1.3.5.7 = 1*20*18*20 + 3*18*20 + 5*20 + 7*1 = 8,387
and 11.12.13.14.15 = 11*20*20*18*20 + 12*20*18*20 + 13*18*20 + 14*20 + 15*1
= 11*144,000 + 12*7,200 + 13*360 + 14*20 + 15
= 1,675,375.

A Maya long-count date is a modified vigesimal number (as described above) composed of five places; for example, 9.11.16.0.0, and interpreted as a count of days from some base date. There are many long count dates inscribed in the stellar and written in the codices. Calculation of the decimal equivalent of a long count yields a number of days. This is regarded as a number of days counted forward from a certain day in the past. It is the number of days since the day 0.0.0.0.0. The obvious question is: What day was used as the base date? This question has two aspects: (1) What day was used by the Mayas as the base date? (2) What day was that in terms of the Western calendar? We shall return to these questions below.

Just as we have names (such as week) for certain periods of time, the Mayas had names for periods consisting of 20 days, 360 days, 7,200 days, etc., in accord with their modified vigesimal system of counting days. A day is known as a kin. Twenty kins make a uinal, 18 uinals a tun, 20 tuns a katun and 20 katuns a baktun. Thus we have:

1 kin = 1 day
1 uinal = 20 kins = 20 days
1 tun = 18 uinals = 360 days
1 katun = 20 tuns = 7,200 days
1 baktun = 20 katuns = 144,000 days

The numbers at the five places in the long count are thus counts of baktuns, etc., as follows:

baktuns . katuns . tuns . uninals . kin

Thus, for example, 9.15.9.0.1 denotes a count of 9 baktuns, 15 katuns, 9 tuns, no uinals and 1 kin, or in other words, 9*144,000 + 15*7,200 + 9*360 + 0*20 + 1*1 days, or 1,407,201 days. It is a count of days from the Maya base date of 0.0.0.0.0.

Most of the long count dates which occur in the stone inscriptions have a baktun count of 9. The period 9.0.0.0.0 through 10.0.0.0.0, the period of the Classic Maya, is now thought by scholars to coincide with the period (approximately) AD 436 through AD 829. There are, however, some strange anomalies. Morley deciphers two long count dates (found at Palenque) as 1.18.5.4.0 and 1.18.5.3.6 (14 days apart) which are some 2,794 solar years prior to 9.0.0.0.0. Since there is no evidence that the Mayas existed before about 500 B.C., what could these early long count dates possibly be referring to?

We would expect that the next higher unit after the baktun would consist of 20 baktuns, and it appears there was such a unit, called a pictun. However, no long count date occurs with a baktun count of more than 12, except that 13.0.0.0.0 occurs. A widely-accepted school of thought holds that in the Maya long count system 13.0.0.0.0 marks the beginning of a new cycle, and so is equivalent to 0.0.0.0.0. In this view, 13 baktuns make up a great cycle or, Maya era, of 13*144,000 = 1,872,000 days (approximately 5125.37 solar years).

The date 0.0.0.0.0 is equal to year 3113 B.C.
The date 13.0.0.0.0 is equal to year 2012 A.D.

Please NOTE that the above information is just a brief explanation of the Maya calendar. More information can be found at libraries.

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