Mayan Calendar

Mayas are members of indigenous nation who live in southeast Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.

Mayan civilization reached its highest level around 300–900 AD. The population of Mayan nation today is over 4 million.

Mayas used several different calendars. Each of them had different purpose, different context.

Mayan ritual calendar had 260 days. There were 20 names for days of the week.

Let's just mention few examples... Imix (water lily), Chikchan (snake), Ix (jaguar), Ok (dog), Men (eagle) etc.

Each name had a special symbol. The days were numbered from 1 to 13. After the count of thirteen was reached, the next day was numbered 1 again.

Mayas also followed a vague solar year in which they counted 365 days per year.

The 365 day year had months which also had different names like for example Pohp, Wo, Sip, Keh, Mak etc.

They had 18 regular months and 1 extra month. This special month was called Wayeb. It had only 5 days. These days were considered unnamed and unlucky.

Mayas also used special glyphs (symbols, characters) for certain time periods. For example, „kin“ represented one day, „winal“ was a period of 20 days etc.