Mesoamerican Calendars and Archaeoastronomy

Mesoamerican Calendars and Archaeoastronomy  

Anthony F. Aveni
The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology
Edited by Deborah L. Nichols

Print Publication Date: Sep 2012

Subject: Archaeology, Archaeology of Mesoamerica, Art and Architecture
Online Publication Date: Nov 2012 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195390933.013.0059

Abstract and Keywords

This article reviews archaeological evidence of Mesoamerican calendars and archaeoas­

tronomy. Most Mesoamerican calendars measure a year as eighteen months, each con­
sisting of twenty days, with an added month of only five unlucky days. To reckon deep
time, the Maya created the longest Mesoamerican calendar cycle by multiplying the basic
unit of twenty to the fifth order, the exception being the multiplication of the 20-day count
by 18 to form a cycle of 360 days, or one tun , which approximated the year; thus, 20 ×
360 days = 7,200 days, or one katun , and 20 × 7,200 = one baktun . The Long Count cy­
cle consisted of 13 baktuns, or 5,125.37 years. Dates are carved in prominent positions
on hundreds of stelae situated in (likely) publicly accessible locations in open plazas
fronting temples. In addition to monumental texts, codices are the other major source of
calendric information. Of particular interest among the some three hundred almanacs
that make up the Maya codices are those that reveal the extraordinary sophistication of
Maya astronomical practice. The Paris Codex, for example, contains a thirteen-constella­
tion zodiac that implies that Maya astronomers tracked the movement of the sun, moon,
and planets against the background of the stars.

Keywords: Mesoamerica, calendars, Long Count cycle, Maya codices, astronomical practice

In its complexity, precision, and sheer elegance, the Mesoamerican, and especially
the Maya, calendar is at least on par with any of the timekeeping systems of the
ancient Middle East and Mediterranean worlds. Among its hallmarks that facilitat­
ed the performance of mathematical operations were the invention of numerical
place notation, zero, and the use of only three symbols, the dot (one), the bar
(five), and the zero, or completion symbol, all likely derived from hand gestures, to
represent time units, the day serving as the basic temporal currency. (Justeson
1989; Lounsbury 1978)

THE most significant intervallic reckoning period consisted of 260 days, called the tzolkin, or
“count of days,” by the Maya or the tonalpohualli by the Aztecs. Consisting of cycles of twenty
named days, likely derived from the full body count of fingers and toes, and thirteen numerical

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Mesoamerican Calendars and Archaeoastronomy

coefficients, which may have signified the layers of heaven, this divinatory calendar very likely
originated as early as the sixth century BC in the southern Zapotec region, when it was recog­
nized that the commensuration of the two produced a cycle that resonated with natural rhythms.
Mesoamerican daykeepers took particular advantage of commensurate numbers because they
facilitated reckoning events in sacred time. Thus, 260 approximates both the human gestation
period, nine lunar months, and the average duration of (p. 788) appearance of the closely
watched planet Venus as the morning or evening star. Moreover, in mid-Mesoamerican latitudes,
260 is an excellent approximation to the agricultural cycle. It may also be more than mere coin­
cidence that the two days of annual passage of the sun overhead in these latitudes divides the
year into 260-day and 105-day periods. It is likely that, as in timekeeping systems in nonhierar­
chical cultures (cf. Aveni 2004), the agricultural cycle predated the seasonal, or solar-based, cy­
cle of 365 days (ca. 300 BC), reckoning only the time interval during which subsistence activity
took place and disregarding the remainder of the year.
Most Mesoamerican calendars measure a year as eighteen months, each consisting of
twenty days, with an added month of only five unlucky days. There is no solid evidence
that leap year was a valid Mesoamerican concept (cf. Prem 2008). Thus, the year count
would have slowly backslided with respect to the seasons. Combinations of named days in
the 260- and 365-day cycles would occur every 52 years, termed by investigators as a
“calendar round.” Evidence from the Aztec codices and chronicles suggests that at the
time of the overturning of this cycle the world was vulnerable to destruction, for the time
cycles themselves were thought to be reenactments of the ancient cosmic creation myth.
On this occasion New Fire ceremonies were held to commemorate the completion of the
cycle (Figure 59.1). Blood sacrifices were offered by drilling fire in the chest of a sacri­
ficed victim as a debt payment to the gods, so that the sun, and therefore time, would
continue on its course.

Figure 59.1 New Fire fifty-two-year-cycle celebra­

tion rites are exhibited in the Central Mexican Codex
Borbonicus, 34.

To reckon deep time, the Maya created the longest Mesoamerican calendar cycle by mul­
tiplying the basic unit of twenty to the fifth order, the exception being the multiplication
of the 20-day count by 18 to form a cycle of 360 days, or one tun, (p. 789) which approxi­

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Mesoamerican Calendars and Archaeoastronomy

mated the year; thus, 20 x 360 days = 7,200 days, or one katun, and 20 x 7,200 = one
baktun. The Long Count cycle consisted of 13 baktuns, or 5,125.37 years. Dates are
carved in prominent positions on hundreds of stelae situated in (likely) publicly accessible
locations in open plazas fronting temples. Monumental Long Count dates appear from the
first century BC to the mid-ninth century AD, or late baktun 7 to early baktun 10, along­
side portrayals of rulers whose accessions, captures, alliances, and so on, are written in
the accompanying hieroglyphs. These data imply that the cycle was employed as a con­
duit for political propaganda. As was the case in the Old World, such monuments served
the purpose of anchoring dynastic lineage to the distant past, when the ancestor gods
created the world. Subdivisions of the cycle (e.g., the thirteen katuns) may have been
used to set up social order via a set of rotating geopolitical capitals (Rice 2004, 2007).
The Long Count zero date, calculated back from baktun 7, is August 11, 3114 BC. The cy­
cle will overturn on December 21, 2012 CE. That the first date was a solar zenith passage
and the last a winter solstice may have played a role in setting up the cycle to be in tune
with significant seasonal marking points; however, no other significant astronomical
event matches either the starting or ending date.

The equivalent Christian dates in the Julian Calendar for events expressed in the Long
Count are arrived at via the Goodman-Thompson-Martinez correlation family, which is
based on a combination of ethnohistoric documentation and internal consistency with
predicted dates of astronomical events verifiable both historically and via back calcula­
tion. The correlation constant, or the number of days one must add to a Long Count to ar­
rive at a Julian date, is almost universally agreed upon to within two days (either 584,283
or 584,285). The former constant has been employed throughout this essay (cf. Bricker
and Bricker 2011 for detailed arguments favoring this choice).

In addition to monumental texts, codices are the other major source of calendric informa­
tion. In central Mexico some twenty precontact documents survive. Most of them are
fashioned out of lime-coated, painted animal skin. Contents include narrative histories, or
details regarding ritual procedures, such as what to sacrifice, to whom, and when, the lat­
ter couched almost exclusively in divisions and multiples of the 260-day cycle (cf. Boone
2007). Only three agreed-upon examples of codices survive the Maya conquest: most of
these folded-screen, bark texts were destroyed by the early Spanish chroniclers, who re­
garded them as the work of the devil. Far more elaborate than their central Mexican
counterparts, they consisted of hieroglyphic notation, tzolkin rounds, and some Long
Count dates. They are exclusively divinatory in nature and incorporate the teachings of
the elite daykeepers, whose courtly scribes were closely allied with the royal lineages.

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Mesoamerican Calendars and Archaeoastronomy

Figure 59.2 The Maya zodiac, a testimony to their in­

terest in following celestial motions. Paris Codex,
23-4 (Vail and Hernández 2011).

Of particular interest among the some three hundred almanacs that make up the Maya
codices are those that reveal the extraordinary sophistication of Maya astronomical prac­
tice. The Paris Codex, for example, contains a thirteen-constellation zodiac that implies
that Maya astronomers tracked the movement of the sun, moon, and planets against the
background of the stars (Figure 59.2). A Venus table in the Dresden Codex marks the first
and last appearance of that (p. 790) planet in the morning and evening sky. An accompany­
ing correction table allows the user to fit the canonic round of 584 days to the observed
Venus cycle of 583.92 days to an accuracy of one day in five hundred years. That a similar
table can be found in the central Mexican Codex Borgia may imply long-distance cross-
cultural trafficking in ideas about the measure of time across ancient Mesoamerica (cf.
Vail and Aveni 2004).

Other almanacs in the Maya codices incorporate mathematical mechanisms for reckoning
the motion of Mars and eclipse warnings. Recent investigations posit that a number of al­
manacs previously thought to refer to endless cycles of 260 days may also have been in­
tended to indicate adjustable seasonal points in a historical (“real-time”) framework (cf.
Bricker and Bricker 2011, Vail and Aveni 2004). A similar example has also been proposed
in the Borgia Codex (Milbrath 2007). While Mesoamerican astronomy is quantitative and
precise, its end responds exclusively to astrological interests, namely securing predic­
tions concerning crops, disease, rain, and so forth.

Though so much evidence relating to precontact calendrical practice has been destroyed,
some information survives, though in modified form, in the post-conquest Books of Chil­
am Balam and Annals of the Cakchiquel in the Maya area. These several sacred historical
books, housed in and named after towns that grew up around the Maya ruins, refer to
particular ritual cycles, especially to prophecies that accompany katun endings. In addi­
tion, books by Spanish chroniclers (e.g., Durán and Sahagún in Mexico, and Landa in Yu­
catán) contain narratives that refer to calendrical divinatory procedures, calendar
wheels, stars, names of (p. 791) constellations, planets, and eclipses. Though heavily cor­
rupted by the Hispanic worldview, indigenous ideas and practices can nonetheless be ex­
tracted from these valuable data.

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Mesoamerican Calendars and Archaeoastronomy

In addition to the excavation, restoration, and preservation of carved texts on the monu­
ments, the archaeological record offers insight into the role of time, astronomy, and cos­
mology in urban planning, as well as in the architectural placement and orientation of
particular structures. The interdisciplinary study of archaeoastronomy, lately renamed
“cultural astronomy” (Ruggles and Saunders 1993), is the study of the practice of astron­
omy in ancient civilizations based on both written and unwritten records. A broad survey
of the methodology and history of such studies is detailed in Aveni's work (2001, 2003,
2008). Because sky events offer the most reliable seasonal and longer-term timing de­
vices, one might expect celestial axes and pivots to play a role in architectural planning,
especially where ceremonial activities are conducted, and most especially in cultures
known to have exhibited an interest in sky phenomena based on the written and pictorial
record. Herewith are a few examples.

According to the Aztecs, Teotihuacan was regarded as the place where time began when
the sun was born. The deviation from cardinality as well from the lay of the land, by some
15½° clockwise, of the rigid rectangular grid structure of the city is likely owed, at least
in part, to an attempt to duplicate the cosmos in the built environment. The east-west ori­
entation of the city is directed toward the setting point of the Pleiades star group, which
passed the overhead point when Teotihuacan was founded, ca. 200 BC. Moreover, the
predawn appearance of the Pleiades in the east coincided with the date of the first two
annual passages of the sun overhead. This clever sun-and-star timing device, incorporat­
ed into the spatial fabric of the city, may have served as a way of both controlling and cel­
ebrating time, a response to the cosmic mandate connecting rulership to transcendence.
The 15½° axis also coincides with sunset positions forty days after the spring equinox and
twenty days before first solar zenith passage, which may imply an attempt to configure
the basic twenty-day Mesoamerican calendrical count into a horizon-based calendar, fur­
ther linking city and cosmos. Sugiyama (2010) has proposed that multiples of basic calen­
drical periods such as 260-day and the 584-day Venus cycle served as measuring units ap­
plied to the dimensions and relative spacing of many of Teotihuacan's basic structures.
Local mountains and caves also appear to have played a role in the city plan. One can ap­
preciate the problem confronting the architectural designers, who were faced with the
practical problem of arranging their city to be in perfect harmony with the many manifes­
tations of nature they believed lay at the source of their power.

The influence of Teotihuacan architectural tradition resonates in the skewed orientation

plans of other sites in highland Mexico. The calendar is also reflected in the architects’
plan. More than eighty pecked cross-circle petroglyphs found all over Mesoamerica, from
the Tropic of Cancer to the Petén rain forest, appear to have served as calendric counting
devices related to the calendar at Teotihuacan. Two of these devices, which consist (usu­
ally) of a double circle centered on a cross (p. 792) pecked into stucco floors or rock out­
crops, mark the east-to-west Teotihuacan alignment. An interesting analog appears in the
stucco subfloor of Structure A-V at the Maya site of Uaxactún. Its count of twenty on each
axis of the cross follows that of several prototypes found at Teotihuacan; however, counts
of the circular elements reflect aspects of both local and Teotihuacan solar seasonal tim­
ings (Aveni 2000). Whether this Teotihuacan connection resulted simply from an imitation
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of style or a direct imposition of some sort of “Teotihuacan Standard Time” in the Maya
area is not clear, but the idea of employment of Mesoamerican time standards makes
sense given the demands of economy and trade.

Evidence for the dissemination of Teotihuacan astronomy and the calendar 650 kilome­
ters to the northwest appears in alignments at Alta Vista (Chalchihuites), a site exhibiting
the ceramic influence of the Teotihuacan Tlamimilolpa-Xolalpan phase (ca. 250–550 CE).
An equinox orientation defined by the east-west corner points of the principal temple
points to the most important mountain on the eastern horizon, the site of an ancient
turquoise mine. Alignment with the same mountain is duplicated on the June solstice from
a backsight located on a plateau overlooking Alta Vista. The latter site is marked by a pair
of pecked cross-circle petroglyphs. That the site is located at the Tropic of Cancer adds to
the motive for cosmic preplanning, for this is where the sun stands overhead at noon on
but one day of the year, the June solstice.

Maya cities also exhibit systematic deviations from cardinality, with more than 84 percent
of them being skewed to the east of north. A peak at 14° is especially prominent in the
Puuc (Terminal Classic, ca. 900 CE) alignments. This may have constituted an attempt to
transform a twenty-day based seasonal calendar acquired from the Petén to one more
suited to seasonal phenomena in the more northerly Puuc latitudes.

Other celestially aligned Maya complexes include Tikal's quadripartite Twin Pyramid
groups, which invite comparison with cosmograms in the codices (but see the archaeolog­
ical debate-discussion of “city as cosmogram” reported in Aveni [2008]). Oddly shaped
and oriented individual Maya structures include the Caracol of Chichén Itzá and the
House of the Governor at Uxmal, both likely dedicated to Venus, with rituals of the sort
detailed in the Venus table in the Dresden Codex. Both align with eight-year standstill po­
sitions of Venus on the horizon.

Figure 59.3 The E-Group Complex at Uaxactún, a

prototype of solar-aligned Maya architectural assem­
blages (Aveni, 2001: Fig. 109).

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The assemblages known as E-Groups, named for the prototype at Uaxactún, consist of a
series of three small buildings (Structures EI-EII-EIII) located on a single platform
fronting on the east a radial pyramid (EVII-sub). From the latter site the sun rises over EI
and EIII on the solstices and over EII at the equinox (Figure 59.3). Among the more than
thirty later complexes that fit this category, precise solar alignment may have become a
minor consideration (Aimers and Rice 2006), subservient to metaphoric principles tying
together concepts of sacred space and stressing ritual performance related to agricultur­
al events. However, there is some evidence supported by alignments in the E-Group com­
plexes that can be measured with some precision that points to a change in calendar ori­
entation at about the beginning of the Classic (ca 200 CE), not unlike that which occurred
in (p. 793) the Puuc sites. Alignment dates focus on the beginning of the twenty-day
months that lead up to the first solar zenith passage, which coincides with the period
when the rainy season would have been anticipated (Aveni et al. 2003). One might better
think of these astronomically aligned structures as theaters where sacred rites were con­
ducted upon the timed arrival of the celestial deity, rather than as precise “scientific” ob­
servatories used by elite specialists.

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Anthony F. Aveni

Anthony F. Aveni (Colgate University)

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