[Odin]

(...continued)

Haab' (Solar Calender)

This was the calendar for keeping track of the seasons. Like the ancient Egyptian calendar it was rather crude and inaccurate. However is was good enough to keep track of day to day life. It consisted of 18 months of 20 days each. This is followed by 5 nameless days called the Wayeb'. This gives us a calendar of 365 days. [(18 × 20) + 5 = 365] The Mayans new that the solar year was actually 364¼ days long, but they considered the count of 365 to be sufficient.

The names of the months are: Pop, Wo, Sip, Sotz', Sek, Xul, Yaxk'in, Mol, Ch'en, Yax, Sac, Keh, Mak K'ank'in, Muwan, Pax, K'ayab', and Kumk'u. This is followed by the 5 days of Wayeb'.

Example of how the dates are recorded:

0 Pop ← The 1st day of the year, and yes you do start with zero!
1 Pop
2 Pop
.
.
.
19 Pop
0 Wo ← The 1st day of the 2nd month, the 21st day of the year.
.. and so on till ...
19 Kumk'u ← The 360th day of the year and the last named day.

Then came the 5 unnamed days of Wayeb'. This was considered to be a dangerous time when the barriers to the underworld broke down, and evil spirits could roam the mortal realm.

Like the tzolk'in calender, the haab' calender was represented by a combination of two symbols.

Also like the tzolk'in, the haab' calender made no attempt to identify the year. However by using the tzolk'in and haab' calenders together. You come of with a unique combination of dates that repeats exactly every 52 years. A date like 11 Chuwen 4 Sip will only occur every 52 years. Given that the average life expectancy was about 35, this was fine for every event within a persons expected life. The period of 52 years is called a Calendar Round.

While the Calendar Round system, might be fine for day to day life, it was useless for recording the history of the kings, empire, and gods. For that you need something much more precise. That is were the Long Count Calender comes into play.

(to be continued...)