by Craig Nybo

Created on: December 08, 2008

"Anyone can be a millionaire, but to become a billionaire you need an astrologer." That's what J.P. Morgan, early 19th century billionaire, said about the stars. The Mayan's might have agreed. But more important to becoming a billionaire, the Mayans concerned themselves with creating an extremely accurate calendar that could not only tell time by studying the movements of heavenly bodies, it could tell the future.

Obsessed with the position and movement of heavenly bodies, the Mayans incorporated these rotations into a complicatedand astonishingly accurateset of calendars that work together much like a nested set of gears. The most significant calendar, known as the Tzolkin works on a 260-day cycle. Scholars believe that this calendar was used as a common, daily time accounting tool.

The Tzolkin interacted with a second calendar called the Haab, which functioned on a 365-day cycle. When these two calendars were used together, time was divided into synchronized cycles of 52 Haab years. This cycle creates a third calendar called the Calendar Round. Eras of time longer than the 52-year cycle of the Calendar Round were reckoned using a fourth calendar called the Long Count.

THE TZOLKIN
The Tzolinthe calendar most generally used in the Mayan culture for divination, ritual, and the accounting of daysfunctioned on a 260-day cycle. The Tzolkin worked by combining a group of 20 named days, each associated with a patron god, with 13 numbers. Each day was also represented by a glyph. Some such days are: Kan or "maize," the young maize lord who brings abundance and ripeness; another day, Caben or "earthquake," represents astonishing power.

Shaman priests, known as Ah K'in, translated as "day keeper," acted as oracles to the Mayan people. They used the Tzolkin and ritual tools such as seeds to divine events and to recommend optimal days for certain activities such as going to battle, conducting business, or holding festivals and celebration.

THE HAAB
The Haab, based on a 365-day solar year, acted as a seasonal calendar. Dropping the extra day in the actual tropical year caused the Haab to be an inaccurate accounting of seasons. Seasons shifted in their relationship with the Haab, causing season names to not correspond with climate seasons over decades of time.

The Haab year was divided into eighteen months of 20 days. At the end of the eighteen-month year, a 5-day period of uncertainty was known as the Wayeb.

The Haab, when used with the Tzolkin created another calendar called the

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