The famous Maya calendar may have been in use a century earlier than we thought, extending its history back about 2300 years.
Maya calendar
Several ancient communities living across the Americas – including the Aztecs, Maya, Mixtecs and Zapotecs – tracked the time using cycles of 13 days denoted by numbers, alongside cycles of 20 days named after gods. In this calendar, a specific day is assigned both a number and a name, producing 260 unique days before the cycle repeats. It is thought that people used the calendar to decide when to hold ceremonies, to mark important dates or to attempt to predict future events.
at the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues have now found evidence that the Maya people may have used this calendar over a century earlier.The team previously discovered the San Bartolo archaeological site, which includes a pyramid called Las Pinturas – meaning “the paintings” – back in 2001. Excavations then revealed that the Maya completed several phases of construction, with earlier structures eventually knocked down to form the foundations of the pyramid.
“That was a stunner – we believe that this is the earliest example of the use of the Maya calendar, showing the day seven Deer,” says Stuart.The fragments came from the remains of a long platform that was probably built to track astronomical events as well as the time. “This platform may have acted as an observatory for looking at the rising sun or other astronomical bodies in the sky, or for just keeping track of time. Like a kind of architectural clock,” says Stuart.
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This Could Be The Earliest Evidence of a 260-Day Maya Calendar Ever FoundAmong the fragments of an ancient Mesoamerican mural, archaeologists in Guatemala have uncovered the earliest unequivocal evidence of a Maya sacred calendar.
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Earliest evidence of Maya calendar found inside Guatemalan pyramidA glyph representing a day called '7 Deer' on mural fragments dating from the third century BC found inside the ruins of a pyramid in Guatemala marks the earliest-known use of the Maya calendar, one of this ancient culture's renowned achievements.
Read more »
This Could Be The Earliest Evidence of a 260-Day Maya Calendar Ever FoundAmong the fragments of an ancient Mesoamerican mural, archaeologists in Guatemala have uncovered the earliest unequivocal evidence of a Maya sacred calendar.
Read more »
Earliest evidence of Maya calendar found inside Guatemalan pyramidA glyph representing a day called '7 Deer' on mural fragments dating from the third century BC found inside the ruins of a pyramid in Guatemala marks the earliest-known use of the Maya calendar, one of this ancient culture's renowned achievements.
Read more »