Given the relatively uncomplicated agrarian life the early
Mesoamerican civilizations led-a life of basic hard work in the fields the
average person would have needed to know little more than what the fates had in
store for a few or perhaps several days in advance. But as Maya societies
became more hierarchically organized states, and people became more specialized
and interests more diversified, their calendar became more structured and
formalized. Small periods were built up to create lengthier ones. Where in our
calendar months become bricks in an edifice of years, there is sound
archaeological evidence that by 200 B.C. the Maya had developed a system of
counting the days in units of 260. The complete cycle, called the Maya tzolkin,
or sacred day count, was probably invented by pairing number coefficients 1
through 13 with the rotating cycle of the 20 day names (shown in figure 6.4),
in much the same way that we lay the 30 (or 31) number days of the month
alongside the cycle of 7 day names. (The glyphs placed next to the dot and bar
coefficients in the inscriptions in figure 6.4 are the day names associated
with those numbers.)
. . .
Though a number can be written by dot and bar combinations, each one
also had its own particular face (see figures 6.5 and 6.7). For example, the
head of the deity who is the number 8 was a youthful maize god-as is denoted by
the maize plant growing out of his head; often he has a chain of maize kernels
draped over his ear. Number 10’s countenance is a skull with a bared jawbone
and a nose devoid of its flesh: it evokes the image of death. Now, the 2 number
symbols I just chose from the list of 13100k the same as the 2 day signs among
the 20 mentioned earlier; and like the numbers 8 and 10, the day names Kan and
Cimi also happen to be 2 days apart. Indeed, the order of the head number
glyphs in figure 6.5 matches quite well in most attributes with a sequence that
can be traced out among 13 of the 20 day names in figure 6.4; but the 7 day-name
glyphs that follow all look different from any of the number glyphs. (Anthony
Aveni, Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures [New York: Basic
Books, Inc., Publishers, 1989], 197, 199)
Here are figures
6.4, 6.5, and 6.7 as found on ibid., 196, 198, 207:
