Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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ANCIENT CENTRAL AMERICA AND MEXICO 133 partly pictorial and partly conventionalized, partly ideographic and partly in all probability phonetic.
Thanks to Landa, we can read the symbols of the days and the months (Fig. 69, 1-2). The day was called kin, "the sun." The calendar was even more complicated than the Aztec calendar, which derived from it, and the names were different. There were two kinds of months, a, "moon," of 30 days, and uinal, of 20 days, which was the basis of the solar year, fun. This had 18 ninals and five supplementary days, called xma kaba kin, "withoutname-days," also uayab or uayeb haab, "the bed of the year," oru vail kin or u yail haab, "the unfortunate days." The Mayas had no leap year, but the length of the tropical year was very accurately determined. 20
VAININ
9
M
ANKETKO
DO 000
Fig. 69 1, Maya symbols of the months, according to the Dresden codex. 2, Maya symbols of the days, according to monuments (upper part) and muscripts (lower part). 3. The highest number found in Maya inscription 1,841,639,800 dass, corresponding to over
5,100,000 years
tun formed a katun or edad of (20 x 360) 7.200 days, and 20 katun a bactun of 144,000 days. The days were defined by their names and numbered consecutively from 1 to 13; the arbitrary period of 260 days, Izolkin, combined with the tun, gave the Maya cycle of about 236 years.
The numeration was vigesimal. The character for zero-the impor of which was recognized by the Mayas many centuries before any other people in the world was similar to a shell, the numerals (Fig. 69. 3) 1-7 were represented by dots, the numerals 5, 10, 15 by sticks, lines or bars, 20 perhaps by the moon; the symbols for the multiples of 20 (400. 8.000, 160,000, etc.) are still uncertain; it may be, however, that they had the "place-value" notation,
