The Mysterious Maya Calendar explained

The Maya calendar. As you might have heard the Maya calendar is incredibly sophisticated. From a modern perspective it is at once very impressive and at the same time unnecessarily complicated. But this complexity is just a reflection of the sacred reference that the Maya gave to the passage of time and the associated motion of the heavenly bodies. Now let's take a look at what they found. Hey good to see you this is Stefan, author of In Search of the Sublime. On this world history channel we'll trace humanity's relentless pursuit of scientific truth, moral excellence and enlightenment. We'll meet anyone from Mesopotamian astronomers and Indian yogis to Greek philosophers and enlightenment scientists. And you'll meet them firsthand using primary sources, giving you valuable insights that transcend the surface level understanding you get on other channels. Go check it out for yourself. Let's start. If you want to have any chance at understanding the Maya calendar we first have to understand their counting system. Cleverly they used only three symbols. A dot for one, a horizontal line for five and a shell for zero. The inclusion of zero here is significant as many civilizations including the Greeks who are so well known for their mathematics did not invent zero. And here we have the first 20 symbols of their counting system. First we have that shell for zero then we count up to four in dots and from five onwards we use those bars which represent five. Strangely and this is not properly understood the Maya used a base 20 numeral system as opposed to our base 10 or decimal system that we use today. This means that they had distinct symbols we've just seen them for 0 to 19 but for higher numbers they would combine these symbols using place value notation similarly to what we do today. Let me explain. The modern number 41 for instance doesn't mean 4 plus 1 is 5. The 4 since it occupies the second place from the right instead has the value 4 times 10 is 40. The Maya did the same but now with their base 20 system so 41 in Mayan becomes 4 times 20 is 80 plus 1 is 81. And here we see two examples of how to write these numbers in Mayan notation. Let's start with the example on the left. We read those numbers from bottom to top. The first number on the bottom says 6 it's the horizontal stripe and the dot 6 and the number above it reads 4 but 4 times 20 is 80 so the number on the left is 86. Now the example on the right we start with a 2 at the bottom then we get a horizontal bar so a 5 but it's 5 times 20 is 100 and here we have even another sign above it which reads 6 but becomes 6 times 20 times 20 is 2400. So in total this number adds up to 2502. If you thought this number system was a bit hard compared to the one we use today wait until you see the Mayan script. Let's now dig into that. The Mayan script which dates back to at least the 3rd century BC is the most famous and also most beautiful writing system of the Americas. The script was finally deciphered with great difficulties in the 1970s by various scholars. What made this decipherment especially difficult is that there are glyphs or letters for both words and sounds and on top of this every glyph also exists in many variations. For instance here are three glyphs representing the word zero. We've already seen the top one the shell but it also comes as a face and also as a complete human being and here we see many ways to write the letter U. So now you probably understand why it took a long time to decipher these texts. As you might imagine writing among the Mayans was seen as an art form and writers were allowed to change these glyphs according to their own artistic taste. In fact the Mayan word for painter is the same as their word for writer which explains a lot considering what I've just told you. Now we're going to approach the calendar. Let's first discuss the earliest appearances of the Mesoamerican calendar. The oldest written date that we find in Mesoamerica didn't belong to the Mayas but to the Zapotec civilization. It is dated to about 600 BC and shows a captive next to a glyph that reads one earthquake. Unfortunately this date doesn't specify the year it was made but only what day in the Mesoamerican 260 day calendar that came to be used all over Mesoamerica and that we'll discuss in a bit. And here we see that oldest date the captive and underneath his feet we see those earliest glyphs. The first fully readable year corresponding to 32 BC comes from a late Olmec site and we can see it here on the right. The date reads and you can read along with me on the stone 7 a bar and two dots then 16 6 another 16 and then 18. How to convert this row of numbers into an actual date we'll discuss in a bit but it turns out it corresponds in our calendar to 32 BC and here we see the bottom half of that stone but remember that stone was actually found in two pieces and they're now in two different musea. With some imagination there is an even earlier date. In the stela on the right we might read the numbers 7 16 3 2 13 although the first two numbers aren't directly given and this would correspond to 36 BC which is four years older than the previous example. The reason we can probably assume the 7 and the 16 is that those dates correspond to huge periods of time so these two numbers are there in all the historic cases. Much more impressive is the La Majora stela 1 also from that Olmec site which dates to 156 AD and the stela also contains the first large text from Mesoamerica and here we see that beautiful piece of art and here you see an actual photograph of it. It's actually quite hard to read the glyphs on the stone that is the reason scholars have made the drawing you saw on the previous slide. So far we've discussed the pre-Mayan cases but the Mayans took the calendar to the next level. They created what is easily the most intricate calendar of the combining many ways to describe a single date. Let's start with their sacred calendar of 260 days it is called the Tolkien. Each day in this cycle was described by a combination of one of 20 day glyphs combined with 13 numbers number 1 to 13 and this gives a total of 20 times 13 is 260 combinations. How to run through this calendar is in modern days often depicted by two interlocking wheels. This by the way is not how the Mayans envisioned it itself but it is a useful way to understand it. This calendar starts at one emix as you can see if the wheels then turn we go to two etc and this continues for 260 days until we get back to that one emix which will be the start of a new cycle and here we see those 20 day names often given in various forms. Many hypotheses have been proposed to understand the function of this 260 day calendar but none of them are truly convincing. What is certainly unhelpful is that it doesn't sync with the year cycle so also not with the agricultural cycle. From a modern perspective it just seems completely arbitrary. One theory is that it's linked to the period between the appearance of Venus as a morning star and an evening star which is about 260 days but this pattern doesn't recur every 260 days so it doesn't sync up with the calendar at all. Others believe that it might be linked to the period of Mars which happens to be three times 260 days is 780 days. This would actually work but there's no actual evidence for this and there are many many other theories but none of them as I said are very convincing. Besides the falcon there was also a system based on the 365 day solar year which is called the HAAP in Mayan. This cycle consists of one of 18 month glyphs combined with one of 20 numbers in this case from 0 to 19. This adds up to a total of 18 times 20 is 360 days. Another 5 day 19th month is then added on top of this to get to the 365 days. In these last five days we are considered a very unlucky dangerous time and here we see the glyphs for those 19 months. Then there was the so-called year bearer system. It was found and I'll explain that in a minute that each solar year always started on just four day glyphs from the 260 Tolkien system. Namely the first day of each year always started on either the house glyph, the rabbit glyph, the reed glyph or the flint glyph. Let's examine why and please hang on here for a moment. As I've told you there are 20 day glyphs in the Tolkien system. After 18 full rounds through those 20 day glyphs we get to 360 and then we have only five days left until the full year is finished. So to complete the year with those extra five days that 20 day calendar had to advance by another five days. This can be done four times since four times five days is 20 until we get back to the first glyph in that 20 day cycle and this is the reason that the year always starts on one of these four day glyphs. Let's now also look at the 13 day cycle. As I've told you before the Tolkien system combines those 20 days with 13 numbers. After 28 full rounds of that 13 day cycle we get to 364 days which means we have only one day left until we get to the start of the next year and this means that after a full year the 13 day cycle has neatly advanced by only one day which is quite a neat aspect of this calendar. So at the first day of each year we run to those four day glyphs while we also cycle to the numbers 1 to 13 in order. Quite brilliant if you ask me. So to make it a bit more explicit in this way we start each year first with one house then two rabbit and three reed then four flint and then at five we start at house again then six rabbit and we continue till 13 and then we start at one again. Running through those four name glyphs combined with those numbers 1 to 13 this calendar covered 4 times 13 is 52 years until we got back to that first one house and that cycle of 52 years is now called the calendar round and it was also considered very important among the Mayans. On top of this there was also the long count system and this repeats itself after a period of over 5,000 years. The previous cycle started on August 11, 3114 BC and it ended as you all probably know on December 21st 2012. There was even a whole movie about this. Each day in this long count system calendar is described relative to this starting date at 3114 BC and it is counted in a number of days which are called kins, in a number of 20 day winals, in a number of 360 day tons then we have 7,200 day katuns and 144,000 baktuns. In modern notation the first day of the cycle is described as 0 0 0 0 0 and the cycle ends 13 baktuns later or 13 0 0 0 0 when the Mayans believed that a new phase of creation would start and this cycle together is about 5,000 years and here we see a number of variants of glyphs for those kins, winals and so on. On top of this there were also a number of lunar cycles that were tracked. One indicates the phase of the moon and another one counts the lunar months from 1 to 6 which turns out important for predicting lunar and solar eclipses and finally there is a curious 819 day cycle which according to one theory but this isn't confirmed is related to the orbital times of Jupiter and Saturn respectively 399 and As it turns out the highest common divisor of these two numbers is 21 and 819 is also a multiple of 21 so there might be something to it but without direct evidence I think it's a bit far-fetched. Now let's bring all these different calendars together. If Mayan texts give dates they often bring all of these calendars together which is actually quite peculiar since only the long count system alone would be enough to determine a date in history but of course the point of their system was not just to determine a date. To them it described a sort of cosmic spectacle to do with the planets and the moon and so on. As an example let's study the so-called Leiden plaque. You can see it here in the photograph although it isn't particularly clear but here we have a much clearer drawing. From top to bottom we first see an introductory sign and then underneath it we see the long count date 8 baktun, 14 katuns, 3 tuns, 1 wainil and 12 kins. Since you know how to count in Mayan you can now check that these numbers are correct. For instance the first number is a horizontal line it's now flipped vertical by the way and three dots next to it which is 8. The next are two horizontal lines and then four dots which is 14 and so on. So the long count date is 8 14 3 1 12 and this date corresponds to 8 times that 144 000, 14 times the 7 200, 3 times 360, 1 times 20 and 12 times 1 day and that together adds up to over a million days. If we add that large number of days to the starting date august 11 3 114 bc and we also correct for leap years which is by the way quite a hassle then we end up at september 15 320 ad. Under the long count symbols we also see the tzolkin system which in this case reads 1 eb. Then underneath it we have the lord of the night glyph which is a nine day cycle we haven't even mentioned and then to the right and the bottom of that we see the hab system which reads 0 yakskin and then finally underneath there are some glyphs describing the coronation of a ruler and that date of course is the year that this ruler was crowned. As a final example let's study the stella to the right. The text below gives the date of the ascension to the throne of a man called Bert Jaguar III. Here we see that same text in a clearer format. The text starts with another introductory glyph. In modern jargon it's called an introductory series initial glyph or an esik and it signals that a date will be given after that. Next come the five glyphs of the long count calendar and if we do the same calculation we did just now we find that it corresponds to may the 3rd 752 ad and then we get the tzolkin date then we head into the second column which gives the so-called supplementary series which includes the lunar phase that we talked about the lunation counter from 1 to 6 and also again a lord of the night glyph and then finally in this case we get the hab 365 day calendar and that ladies and gentlemen is how the maya calendar works. If you found this all very interesting I would like to refer you to my book in search of the sublime. Of course you can buy a physical copy but you can also read it for free online on worldhistorybook.com. I hope to see you there, bye-bye.