Fragments of Ancient Maya 260-Day Calendar Found in Guatemala

Archaeologists say they have discovered the earliest-yet proof of a Mesoamerican calendar in fragments of painted murals made in what’s now Guatemala over 2,000 years in the past.

The murals have been present in a constructing advanced known as Las Pinturas (“the paintings”), on the Maya web site of San Bartolo in Guatemala. The murals depict numerous people and gods in a pyramidal temple. They date to between 300 and 200 BCE, and file a date, 7 Deer, that’s a part of the 260-day Tzolk’in divinatory calendar. The staff’s analysis is published in the present day in Science Advances.

“It was generally believed that the calendar system of 260 days originated elsewhere, maybe in Oaxaca,” stated David Stuart, an archaeologist on the University of Texas, Austin and lead writer of the analysis, in an e-mail to Gizmodo. “This new find makes Maya evidence just as old, and indicates that the origin-place of the Calendar is an open question. It could even have been a Maya development for all we know.”

The Tzolk’in calendar pairs 13 numbers with 20 named days in a 260-day cycle, that means that there aren’t any weeks and months within the system. Some Maya teams nonetheless observe the calendar. The 7 Deer date the staff discovered contains the Mayan numeral for seven with the top of a deer painted beneath.

Much of what we all know in regards to the Maya’s astrological and calendrical techniques come from a series of codices that survived destruction on the hand of Spanish monks within the sixteenth century. But a number of surviving artifacts point out the Mesoamerican civilization’s calendar system dates to nicely earlier than the codices have been scribed. In 2011, a staff of archaeologists (a staff Stuart was part of) discovered a Maya room within the Xultún advanced in Guatemala that contained calendrical hieroglyphs. But the newly discovered calendar file is over 1,000 years older.

“Early evidence of Mesoamerican calendar has been debated, but they present clear evidence of the 260-day calendar,” stated Takeshi Inomata, an archaeologist on the University of Arizona who’s unaffiliated with the brand new work, in an e-mail to Gizmodo. “Their work at the site of San Bartolo has been transforming our understanding of Maya writing and art.”

The researchers observe that one obvious Maya hieroglyph present in Mexico’s Tabasco area dates to 650 BCE, however they don’t imagine that hieroglyph represents a day. The newly introduced Guatemalan calendar glyph can also be uncommon in that it was painted; earlier potential proof of the calendar is carved in stone monuments.

Gerardo Aldana, an archaeologist at UC Santa Barbara who was unaffiliated with the analysis, stated that the work was uncommon and essential however “raises as many questions as it answers.” Aldana famous that cultural alternate between what’s now thought of Maya and Isthmian areas of Mesoamerica signifies that “writing and calendric traditions and calendric traditions were developed at the regional level,” fairly than in a single place.

“One thing is absolutely clear: San Bartolo and the immediate region is crying out for further research, as it may be able to provide a unique window into the long-term development of regional writing traditions as well as astronomical practices,” Aldana stated.

Hopefully, extra discoveries will yield extra calendrical insights, as archaeologists proceed to interrupt down the origins of this advanced timekeeping system.

More: Lost Monument of Early Maya Civilization Discovered in Mexico