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The Aztec sun stone, often erroneously called the calendar stone, is on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The actual Aztec calendar consists of a 365-day calendar cycle called xiuhpōhualli (year count), and a 260-day ritual cycle called tōnalpōhualli (day count).
A full Long Count date not only includes the five digits of the Long Count, but the 2 character Tzolkʼin and the two-character Haabʼ dates as well. The five digit Long Count can therefore be confirmed with the other four characters (the "calendar round date").
The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar or September 6, 3114 BCE in the Julian Calendar (-3113 astronomical). The Long Count days were tallied in a modified base-20 scheme. Thus 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40.
The tōnalpōhualli (Nahuatl pronunciation: [toːnaɬpoːˈwalːi]), meaning "count of days" in Nahuatl, is a Mexica version of the 260-day calendar in use in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. This calendar is solar and consists of 20 13-day periods. Each trecena is ruled by a different deity. Graphic representations for the twenty day names have ...
Together, these calendars would coincide once every 52 years, the so-called "calendar round," which was initiated by a New Fire ceremony. Aztec years were named for the last day of the 18th month according to the 260-day calendar the tonalpōhualli. The first year of the Aztec calendar round was called 2 Acatl and the last 1 Tochtli.
The earliest long count date (on Stela 2 at Chiappa de Corzo, Chiapas) is from 36 BC. [a] Since the eight earliest Long Count dates appear outside the Maya homeland, [7] it is assumed that the use of zero and the Long Count calendar predated the Maya, and was possibly the invention of the Olmec. Indeed, many of the earliest Long Count dates ...
The Aztec calendar was composed of two separate cycles—one of 260 days called the tonalpohualli (day count) and one of 365 days called the xiuhpohualli (year count). The 365-day xiuhpohualli consisted of 18 twenty-day "months" (or veintenas), plus an additional 5 days at the end of the year.
The pages are made of amate, 20 centimetres (7.9 in) high, and can be folded accordion-style; when unfolded the codex is 3.7 metres (12 ft) long. It is written in Mayan hieroglyphs and refers to an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier, describing local history and astronomical tables .