HEAVEN BORN MERIDA AND ITS DESTINY - Histomesoamericana

INTRODUCTION
Spanish vara (but presumably shorter, as the Maya themselves are). And
above all they measured time.
Not all the above units appear in the Chumayel, but a number of them
are used metaphorically in relation to the calendar (particularly the fold,
cup, bowl, plate, cask, foot, pace, shot, shout, and rest), and all these are
frequently mentioned. The fundamental units in the counting of time
were the kin 'days, suns'.
The Maya had no clocks, and their conceptions of the divisions of day
and night were gestural indications of the movements of the sun and stars.
They were correspondingly imprecise—nothing like Greek geometry developed
in Mayan mathematics. But Mayan arithmetic was sophisticated
and precise, and the Mayan calendar was a marvel of both mathematical
and astronomical accuracy.
The number series is named in Maya in decimal fashion, with separate
roots for each numeral from 1 through 10 and compounds for the numerals
from 11 through 19. However, the word for '20' is simply the word
for 'man' {uinic), and most higher numbers are counted vigesimally in
units metaphorically equated with 20 and its multiples {kal 'armload'
= 20, bak 'coil' = 400, pic '?knuckle' = 8,000, and chil ^occasions''='""
3,200,000). Linguistically it was a decimal system, but conceptually it was
a vigesimal one.
The Tzol Kin. • The basic unit of the calendar was a period of 20 named
days, the uinal (see appendix C). The names of the days are evocative, archaic,
and broadly similar in meaning in the various calendar systems of
nuclear Middle America, though many of them cannot be clearly translated,
particularly not in Yucatec. The myth of the origin of the uinal is
given in chapter 20 together with folk etymologies for the meanings of
the day names. They are almost always puns. In effect, the uinal is a second
and sacred number system, and it is entirely vigesimal.
Along with the cycle of the day names was the cycle of the 13 sacred
day numbers, the xoc kin. These were counted permutadvely and concurrently
with the day names: 1 Imix, 2 Ik, 3 Akbal, 4 Kan, 5 Chicchan, etc.
The number count from 1 to 13 and then from 1 to 7 completes the uinal,
which the Maya noted tersely: "13 and 7 make 1." Thus the numerals 1
and 7 came to represent the concepts of alpha and omega, the beginning
and the end, and the unity of the divine.
If a given uinal begins with 1, its successors will follow a 13-uinal sequence
running 1, 8, 2, 9,3, 10, 4, 11, 5, 12, 6, 13, 7. It then starts over.
Thus in this cycle, too, 1 is the beginning and 7 is the end. The completed
cycle of 13 uinals constitutes a tzol kin or 'count of days'. This
cycle of 260 days was the intertribal calendar of Middle America from
Costa Rica to Michoacan. Because 20 has the factors 4 and 5, the Maya
were impressed with the one-fifth tzol kin (4 x 13 = 52 x 5 = 260 days)
and the one-quarter tzol kin (5 x 13 = 65 x 4 = 260 days) and used
those cycles in ritual and divination along with the complete tzol kin of
260 days.
The Tun. Because the Maya counted vigesimally, it is likely that they
originally counted uinals by twenties as well as by thirteens (as the Cak-
chiquel
days. H
more cl
they sei
tun 'sto
with thi
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From
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started o
cycle wa
stones', i
tun, all i
the day /
Whether
days yieli
Thepe
13 and a i
Ahau day
11,9,7,5
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of 365 da}
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There v
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counted t]
Chichen I
Ahau. (Ab
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Mayan sp«
and the 11
Like uin
thirteens, :
Long Cour
this unit ai
was 1, and
tun, katun
transcribed
kins). All tl
the uinals,
in Maya is
stopped car
ing 10.6.0.C
has usually