The Mayans By: Rachel Jones period 2

The Mayans were an important and influential group in world history because they discovered the 365 day calendar, charted astronomy and planet movements, and created a complex writing system. The Mayan calendar uses three different dating systems called the Long Count, the Tzolkin, and the Haab. The Tzolkin and the Haab identify and name the days, but not the years. The Long Count date comes first, then the Tzolkin date and last, the Haab date. The Long Count calendar is an astronomical calendar and is used for tracking long periods of time. The Mayans called the Long Count the universal cycle and one cycle stretches for 2,880,000 days or 7885 years. The Long Count part of the calendar represents the number of days since the start of the Mayan Era. There are different units of the Long Count. The kin stands for one day, the tun one year, the katun twenty years, and the baktun 394 years. The word Tzolkin means the distribution of the days and is also known as the divine calendar and the Sacred Round. The Tzolkin is a combination of two-week lengths with one week having 13 days numbered 1-13 and a named week of 20 days. The weeks are Ahau, Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan, Chicchan, Cimi, Manik, Lamat, Muluc, Oc, Chuen, Eb, Ben, Ix, Men, Cib, Caban, Etznab, and Caunac. The Haab had 18 months each with 20 days and 5 extra days at the end of all the months called the Uayeb. The calendar has an outer ring of Mayan glyphs, which represent each of the months. Each glyph represents a personality that matches with each month. The Haab is a little off because it is exactly 365 days long. An actual year is 365.2422 days long. In the Gregorian calendar we adjust it by making almost every fourth year a leap year by adding an extra day called a leap day on the 29th of February. The Mayan Calendar is and was an important part of history and still is today.

Astronomy and planet movements were a major part of the Mayan culture and life. The Mayans observed the stars to chart the seasons and created a calendar off of it. The Mayans believed that the wills and the actions of the gods could be read in the stars, the moon, and the planets. They believed that the Earth was in the center of the planets instead of the sun and they planned important events around or with some celestial movements. The sun god Kinich Ahau was a creator god and one of the most powerful gods. Kinich Ahau would be in the sky all day before turning himself into a jaguar at night to pass through Xibalba, which is the Maya underworld. The moon goddess was Ix Chel and she was the goddess of childbirth and fertility. According to the Mayans, the moon was usually a girl, an old woman, or a rabbit. The most important planet to the Mayans was Venus, god of war. Wars would be arranged to happen at a time when Venus was visible and captured warriors or leaders would be sacrificed depending on the position of Venus in the sky. Stars were not as important to them, but were used to predict growing seasons. An example is, when Pleiades rises in the sky it means the rains are coming to the Mayan regions. Many important Mayan buildings, such as temples, pyramids, palaces, observatories and ball courts were laid out because of astronomy. Temples and pyramids were designed in so that the Sun, Moon, stars and planets would be visible from the top or through certain windows at important times of the year. The Milky Way was also very important to the Mayans. They called it the World Tree, which was represented by a tall, flowering tree called the Ceiba. The Milky Way was called the Wakah Chan in the Mayans language. The Mayans developed their own complex writing system instead of copying from other civilizations. The earliest Mayan writing dates back to 250 B.C. The Mayan

writing system has 550 logograms (words) and 150 syllabograms (syllables). It had hundreds of unique signs called glyphs of humans, animals, gods, objects, and signs. All the Mayan words are formed into different combinations of over 800 signs. For a long time, many scholars believed that the script did not represent a language at all, or that it wasn't a complete writing system. Today, most of the Mayan writing can be read, though there are still some unknown glyphs. Examples of the script have been found carved on stone and written on bark, wood, jade, ceramics, and some of their writing has been found in Mexico, Guatemala and northern Belize. They wrote everything on paper made from the inner bark from the amate and ficus trees, which were pounded, bleached, and cut to make paper. The Mayan writing was usually written in paired vertical columns reading from left to right and top to bottom in a zigzag pattern. The Mayan glyphs are one of only three writing systems in the ancient world to be invented without ideas from other civilizations. Using their writing system, the Mayans are able to write anything they can say. Of all the Mayan languages, only two, maybe three were written down with the hieroglyphic system. It is very hard to read the Mayan writing. Since glyph blocks are arranged in a grid, you would think that you read it in rows or columns. Actually, Mayan glyphs are read in "paired columns". This means that the first glyph block is on the top left, the second is to the right of the first, the third is under the first, the fourth under the second, and so on. This means you read in a zigzagging order. When you reach the bottom of the "paired column", you will then go back up to the top and start the next paired column.

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