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The Mayan numeral system was the system to represent numbers and calendar dates in the Maya civilization. It was a vigesimal (base-20) positional numeral system. The numerals are made up of three symbols: zero (a shell), [1] one (a dot) and five (a bar). For example, thirteen is written as three dots in a horizontal row above two horizontal ...
In a vigesimal place system, twenty individual numerals (or digit symbols) are used, ten more than in the decimal system. One modern method of finding the extra needed symbols is to write ten as the letter A, or A 20, where the 20 means base 20, to write nineteen as J 20, and the numbers between with the corresponding letters of the alphabet.
Rather than using a base 10 scheme, the Long Count days were tallied in a modified base-20 scheme. In a pure base 20 scheme, 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25 and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40. The Long Count is not pure base-20, however, since the second digit from the right (and only that digit) rolls over to zero when it reaches 18.
The Maya calendar consists of several cycles or counts of different lengths. The 260-day count is known to scholars as the Tzolkin, or Tzolkʼin. [5] The Tzolkin was combined with a 365-day vague solar year known as the Haabʼ to form a synchronized cycle lasting for 52 Haabʼ called the Calendar Round.
The lords of the night are known in both the Aztec and Maya calendar, although the specific names of the Maya Night Lords are unknown. [2] The glyphs corresponding to the night gods are known and Mayanists identify them with labels G1 to G9, the G series. Generally, these glyphs are frequently used with a fixed glyph coined F.
This is a list of deities playing a role in the Classic (200–1000 CE), Post-Classic (1000–1539 CE) and Contact Period (1511–1697) of Maya religion.The names are mainly taken from the books of Chilam Balam, Lacandon ethnography, the Madrid Codex, the work of Diego de Landa, and the Popol Vuh.
Although the Maya did not actually write alphabetically, nevertheless he recorded a glossary of Maya sounds and related symbols, which was long dismissed as nonsense (for instance, by leading Mayanist J. E. S. Thompson in his 1950 book Maya Hieroglyphic Writing) [21] but eventually became a key resource in deciphering the Maya script.
In William F. Hanks and Don S. Rice, Word and Image in Maya Culture. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1989. Karl Taube, The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatán. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington 1992. Karl Taube, 'The Birth Vase: Natal Imagery in Ancient Maya Myth and Ritual', in The Maya Vase Book Vol. 4, New York 1994. Kerr Associates.