The Maya
The word “Maya” first appeared in a 1505-6 manuscript of Bartholomew Columbus, the brother of Christopher, and later in print in the work of Peter Martyr in his 1516 description of Columbus’ encounter with two canoes of traders in 1502 off the island of Guanaja (Tozzer 1941: n33). At this time, the term Maya or Maia referred to the Yucatan Peninsula and probably derives from Mayapan the city from which the Kokom lineage dominated much of the peninsula (Lothrop 1927). However, the term Mayan now covers speakers of any of the twenty-eight modern languages living from southern Mexico to the Honduran boarder. The relationship between modern Mayan languages is roughly equivalent to that between the European Romance languages (see "Glyphs" section for a more detailed discussion of the language of the Classic period). Mayan speakers appear to have inhabited this geographical area for at least the last 3000 years. The best-known period of Maya history, the so-called Classic period, dates from roughly 200 to 900 CE. While this is the period when many of the famous cities were built to the form visible today, Maya history is really much longer than the Classic period’s 700 years. Recent excavations at the site of San Bartolo, for instance, demonstrate the existence of an early Mayan hieroglyphic script that dates to approximately 300 BCE. Archaeological remains at a number of sites such as Cuello, Cival, Blackman Eddy, and K'axob’, prove that culturally Maya peoples inhabited the Lowlands of the Central Peten and Belize, and probably the Yucatan peninsula by at least 1000 BCE.
As any visitor to Southern Mexico or Guatemala knows the Maya are still very much present. The contemporary Maya are the direct descendents of the people who built the structures that attract much of today's tourism to these regions. It is important here to stress that while there was a major political collapse between 800-900 CE, with corresponding shifts in population, there was never a collapse of the Maya culturally, anymore than there was a European collapse when plague decimated up to 80 percent of the population in some towns and cities. The observant tourist will no doubt hear Mayan spoken in the streets––sometimes even in the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco, two US cities where there are now large populations of Maya. As a constant site of negociation culture is always in a state of flux and is never the same from one point of time to the next, but it has been an oft-repeated mistake to relegate the Maya and other indigenous peoples to the distant past in such a way as to minimize real cultural contiguities with the present, particularly when this serves the interests of the dominate political order.
Xocan, Yucatan, Mexico.
Traditionally, students of Mesoamerican cultures have divided Maya history into periods roughly approximating the following:
Early Preclassic (Early Formative) 2500-1000 BCE
Middle Preclassic (Middle Formative) 1000-400 BCE
Late Preclassic (Late Formative) 400 BCE-200 CE
Early Classic 200-600 CE
Late Classic 600-900 CE
Early Postclassic 900-1200 CE
Late Postclassic 1200-1492 CE
Colonial 1521-1821
Contemporary Maya
Mesoamerican Religion and Culture
In the 1940s Paul Kirchhoff used the term Mesoamerica to refer to a culturally unified region spanning from the Southwest of the United States to the Central American countries of Honduras and El Salvador. A shared belief system untied Mesoamerican peoples culturally, like that of Christianity in Europe or Buddhism and Confucianism in Asia. The Maya are part of this larger Mesoamerican cultural sphere. Thus, from the American Southwest to Central America we find peoples who possess basic cosmological assumptions, religious practices, similar material cultures, artistic conventions, and political structures. This is not to minimize the great diversity found throughout this region, however, in order to understand the peoples of this region it is important to acknowledge their shared cultural and social history.
Calendars
One of the major tangible elements of Mesoamerican high cultures is their focus on time. The art historical and epigraphic record demonstrate an early and sustained engagement with an elaborate calendrical system, vestiges of which are still in use in many modern communities. Anciently there were two major calendars in use in the Maya area during the Classic period-the Calendar Round composed of the 260-day Ritual Calendar interlocked with a cycle of eighteen months, Haab , and the Long Count . Neither of these systems were Maya inventions. The 260-day cycle, the Ritual calendar (tonalpohualli in Nahua) was developed some time before its first documented use by the Zapotec at the site of San José Mogote in 500 BCE. The Long Count was used solely by the Epi-Olmec and Maya and seems to have originated in the first centuries of the Common Era in the Epi-Olmec or Isthmian script.
Calendar Round
The Calendar Round (CR) is made up of two parts the Ritual Calendar and the Haab, each represent a different but interlocked cycle. The Ritual Calendar is composed of a day sign with a numerical coefficient. This component of the CR is known as the 260-day count and is often refered to as the Tzolk'in––a Yucatec word meaning count of days. This was an important ritual calendar and is still used in the Highlands of Guatemala. It is one of the hallmarks of Mesoamerican cultures and was used in some form or another for over the last 2500 years.
Day Name |
|||||||||||||
Imix |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
Ik' |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
Ak'bal |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
Kan |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
Chikchan |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
Kimi |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
Manik |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
Lamat |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
Muluk |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
Ok |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
Chuen |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
Eb' |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
B'en |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
Ix |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
Men |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
Kib' |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
Kab'an |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
Etz'nab' |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
Kawak |
6 |
13 |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
Ajaw |
7 |
1 |
8 |
2 |
9 |
3 |
10 |
4 |
11 |
5 |
12 |
6 |
13 |
This system takes 260 days or 13 x 20 to return to the first position of 1 Imix. So, if we were to begin at 1 Imix the next day would be 2 Ik' and so on.
The second part of the Calendar Round is again composed of a numerical coefficient and a glyph naming a month of 20 days. The number simply counts what day it is in that particular month and is basically equivalent to the 1st of January. The Tzolk'in and Haab cycles come together to form a unique day name that repeats only every fifty-two years.
Long Count
The Long Count (LC) records time of longer durations so long in fact it is basically a record of linear time. Or, rather, the cycles that compose it are so large that as far as human perception is concerned the Long Count is linear in the same way that the earth appears flat because of its great size.
{Signs used in the Calendrical systems}
Time itself was visualized spatially. It was conflated in part with directions derived logically enough from the rising and setting of the sun. Mesoamerican cultures also saw the horizontal world as divided into four quadrants, possibly defined by the rising and setting points of the sun during the solstices. The center was also an extremely important concept in this configuration. For the Maya these ideas were symbolized by the quincunx pattern, which in the syllabary of Maya phonetic signs represents the phoneme bi . And is derived from the word road, bih, in Cholan languages and Epigraphic Maya. Several inscriptions speak of the four roads of the Sun God presumably again referring to the solstices.
Historical narratives were presented and understood within the frame of these calendrical systems as were many of the major rituals of the Classic period.