211 lines
8.4 KiB
Text
211 lines
8.4 KiB
Text
The ancient Maya people had two somewhat distinct calendar systems.
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In somewhat simplified terms, one is a cyclical calendar known as '''The Calendar Round''',
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that meshes several sacred and civil cycles; the other is an offset calendar
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known as '''The Long Count''', similar in many ways to the Gregorian calendar.
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'''The Calendar Round'''
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'''The Calendar Round''' has several intermeshing sacred and civil cycles that uniquely identify a specific date in an approximately 52 year cycle.
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'''The Tzolk’in'''
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The sacred cycle in the Mayan calendar round was called the '''Tzolk’in'''. The '''Tzolk'in''' has a cycle of 20 day names:
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Imix’
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Ik’
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Ak’bal
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K’an
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Chikchan
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Kimi
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Manik’
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Lamat
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Muluk
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Ok
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Chuwen
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Eb
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Ben
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Hix
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Men
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K’ib’
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Kaban
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Etz’nab’
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Kawak
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Ajaw
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Intermeshed with the named days, the '''Tzolk’in''' has a cycle of 13 numbered days; 1
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through 13. Every day has both a number and a name that repeat in a 260 day cycle.
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For example:
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1 Imix’
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2 Ik’
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3 Ak’bal
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...
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11 Chuwen
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12 Eb
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13 Ben
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1 Hix
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2 Men
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3 K’ib’
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... and so on.
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'''The Haab’'''
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The Mayan civil calendar is called the '''Haab’'''. This calendar has 365 days per
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year, and is sometimes called the ‘vague year.’ It is substantially the same as
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our year, but does not make leap year adjustments, so over long periods of time,
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gets out of synchronization with the seasons. It consists of 18 months with 20 days each,
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and the end of the year, a special month of only 5 days, giving a total of 365.
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The 5 days of the month of '''Wayeb’''' (the last month), are usually considered to be
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a time of bad luck.
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Each month in the '''Haab’''' has a name. The Mayan names for the civil months are:
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Pop
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Wo’
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Sip
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Sotz’
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Sek
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Xul
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Yaxk’in
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Mol
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Ch’en
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Yax
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Sak’
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Keh
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Mak
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K’ank’in
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Muwan
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Pax
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K’ayab
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Kumk’u
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Wayeb’ (Short, "unlucky" month)
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The months function very much like ours do. That is, for any given month we
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count through all the days of that month, and then move on to the next month.
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Normally, the day '''1 Pop''' is considered the first day of the civil year, just as '''1 January'''
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is the first day of our year. In 2019, '''1 Pop''' falls on '''April 2nd'''. But,
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because of the leap year in 2020, '''1 Pop''' falls on '''April 1st''' in the years 2020-2023.
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The only really unusual aspect of the '''Haab’''' calendar is that, although there are
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20 (or 5) days in each month, the last day of the month is not called
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the 20th (5th). Instead, the last day of the month is referred to as the
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‘seating,’ or ‘putting in place,’ of the next month. (Much like how in our
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culture, December 24th is Christmas Eve and December 31st is 'New-Years Eve'.) In
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the language of the ancient Maya, the word for seating was '''chum''', So you might
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have:
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...
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18 Pop (18th day of the first month)
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19 Pop (19th day of the first month)
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Chum Wo’ (20th day of the first month)
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1 Wo’ (1st day of the second month)
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... and so on.
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Dates for any particular day are a combination of the '''Tzolk’in''' sacred date,
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and '''Haab’''' civil date. When put together we get the '''“Calendar Round.”'''
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'''Calendar Round''' dates always have two numbers and two names, and they are
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always written in the same order:
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(1) the day number in the '''Tzolk’in'''
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(2) the day name in the '''Tzolk’in'''
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(3) the day of the month in the '''Haab’'''
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(4) the month name in the '''Haab’'''
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A calendar round is a repeating cycle with a period of just short of 52
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Gregorian calendar years. To be precise: it is 52 x 365 days. (No leap days)
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'''Lords of the Night'''
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A third cycle of nine days honored the nine '''Lords of the Night'''; nine deities
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that were associated with each day in turn. The names of the nine deities are
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lost; they are now commonly referred to as '''G1''' through '''G9'''. The Lord of the Night
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may or may not be included in a Mayan date, if it is, it is typically
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just the appropriate '''G(''x'')''' at the end.
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'''The Long Count'''
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Mayans had a separate independent way of measuring time that did not run in
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cycles. (At least, not on normal human scales.) Instead, much like our yearly
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calendar, each day just gets a little further from the starting point. For the
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ancient Maya, the starting point was the ‘creation date’ of the current world.
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This date corresponds to our date of August 11, 3114 B.C. Dates are calculated
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by measuring how many days have transpired since this starting date; This is
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called '''“The Long Count.”''' Rather than just an absolute count of days, the long
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count is broken up into unit blocks, much like our calendar has months, years,
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decades and centuries.
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The basic unit is a '''k’in''' - one day.
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A 20 day month is a '''winal'''.
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18 '''winal''' (360 days) is a '''tun''' - sometimes referred to as a short year.
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20 short years ('''tun''') is a '''k’atun'''
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20 '''k’atun''' is a '''bak’tun'''
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There are longer units too:
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'''Piktun''' == 20 '''Bak’tun''' (8,000 short years)
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'''Kalabtun''' == 20 '''Piktun''' (160,000 short years)
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'''Kinchiltun''' == 20 '''Kalabtun''' (3,200,000 short years)
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For the most part, the Maya only used the blocks of time up to the '''bak’tun'''. One
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'''bak’tun''' is around 394 years, much more than a human life span, so that was all
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they usually needed to describe dates in this era, or this world. It is worth
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noting, the two calendars working together allow much more accurate and reliable
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notation for dates than is available in many other calendar systems; mostly due
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to the pragmatic choice to make the calendar simply track days, rather than
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trying to make it align with seasons and/or try to conflate it with the notion
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of time.
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'''Mayan Date correlations'''
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There is some controversy over finding a correlation point between the Gregorian
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and Mayan calendars. The Gregorian calendar is full of jumps and skips to keep
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the calendar aligned with the seasons so is much more difficult to work with.
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The most commonly used correlation
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factor is The '''GMT: 584283'''. Julian 584283 is a day count corresponding '''Mon, Aug 11, 3114 BCE'''
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in the Gregorian calendar, and the final day in the last Mayan long count
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cycle: 13.0.0.0.0 which is referred to as "the day of creation" in the Mayan
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calendar. There is nothing in known Mayan writing or history that suggests that
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a long count "cycle" resets ''every'' 13 '''bak’tun'''. Judging by their other practices,
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it would make much more sense for it to reset at 20, if at all.
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The reason there was much interest at all, outside historical scholars, in
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the Mayan calendar is that the long count recently (relatively speaking) rolled over to 13.0.0.0.0 (the same as the historic day of creation Long Count date) on Fri,
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Dec 21, 2012 (using the most common GMT correlation factor), prompting conspiracy
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theorists to predict a cataclysmic "end-of-the-world" scenario.
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'''Excerpts taken from, and recommended reading:'''
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*''From the website of the Foundation for the Advancement of Meso-America Studies, Inc.'' <br>Pitts, Mark. The complete Writing in Maya Glyphs Book 2 – Maya Numbers and the Maya Calendar. 2009. Accessed 2019-01-19. <br>http://www.famsi.org/research/pitts/MayaGlyphsBook2.pdf
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*[[wp:Maya_calendar|wikipedia: Maya calendar]]
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*[[wp:Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar|wikipedia: Mesoamerican Long Count calendar]]
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'''The Task:'''
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Write a reusable routine that takes a Gregorian date and returns the equivalent date in Mayan in the Calendar Round and the Long Count. At a minimum, use the GMT correlation. ''If desired, support other correlations.''
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Using the GMT correlation, the following Gregorian and Mayan dates are equivalent:
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'''Dec 21, 2012''' (Gregorian)
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'''4 Ajaw 3 K’ank’in G9''' (Calendar round)
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'''13.0.0.0.0''' (Long count)
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Support looking up dates for at least 50 years before and after the Mayan Long Count '''13 bak’tun''' rollover: ''Dec 21, 2012''. ''(Will require taking into account Gregorian leap days.)''
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Show the output here, on this page, for ''at least'' the following dates:
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''(Note that these are in ISO-8601 format: YYYY-MM-DD. There is no requirement to use ISO-8601 format in your program, but if you differ, make a note of the expected format.)''
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2004-06-19
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2012-12-18
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2012-12-21
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2019-01-19
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2019-03-27
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2020-02-29
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2020-03-01
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