by Kate McCloskey, '97
From 1000 BCE, most of Central America used similar types of
calendars based on material objects and celestial constellations.
The two most common calendars were the 260-day festival calendar
and the 365-day solar calendar. The correlation between the two
occurs every 52 years when both begin their new years. This is
called the "Calendar Round" and the number became
important in Central American cultures.
The 260-day calendar,
called a tzolkin, consists of two wheels, a larger one of twenty
days and a smaller one with the numbers one through thirteen. The
number twenty was based on the digits of a "whole man"
(i.e., fingers and toes) and the thirteen numbers represented
their philosophy of thirteen directions in space. The early
Central Americans believed that this ritualistic calendarrepresented an archetypal state of human and cosmic harmony.
Each
rotation through the thirteen numbers represents one
"week" in this system. The first, sixth, eleventh, and
sixteenth weeks were special and very important; they created the
four divisions of their year. Each of the twenty days was
associated with tangible objects or animals and a deity. This
created a sort of permanent fortune-telling machine and guided
their destinies.
A list of the objects and deities associated with each day is available.