Maya Civilizations - The Maya World
Where Man, Nature and Time are One
by Producciones Z-E

Maya Calculation and Their Calendar

The Maya were the only people measuring time using the long count, a system starting from an imaginary point corresponding to 3114 BC. They are not credited with discovering this system but for having perfected the discoveries of their post-Olmec predecessors.

Mayas developed a calendar as perfect as the modern one. Their mastery of the calculation of time enabled them to write their history and most important to predict their future by means of a cyclical conception of chronological units, as illustrated by their inscriptions.

They also had another system of calculation which used glyphs, in the form of figures that symbolized the numbers and periods appearing at the beginning of many inscriptions, indicating the time that had elapsed since the initial date of the Mayan calendar. In some stelai the numbers are represented by bars and dots and the periods by a profile of a head.

Mayas could also trace the course of the stars and predicted solar and lunar eclipses.

They utilized the mathematic concept of zero and had the most advanced writing system in the New World; they were capable of expressing all kinds of thought and language through a combination of signs and symbols.

As early as the Classic period, the Maya had books in the form of long strips of bast paper folded in a "concertina" and covered with a fine layer of lime on which the scribe painted texts and images. There were also carved and painted inscriptions.

In recent years considerable progress has been made in deciphering these texts, due to a better understanding of the true nature of the writing, in which certain symbols express concepts while others are a transcription of syllables.