Mesoamerican calendars
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Mesoamerican calendars were systems of timekeeping developed by cultures including the Maya, Aztec, Zapotec, and other peoples of ancient Mexico and Central America. They combined ritual, agricultural, political, and astronomical cycles.
A widespread system paired a 260-day ritual calendar with a 365-day solar calendar. The two counts returned to the same combination every 52 solar years in a cycle often called the Calendar Round.
Maya chronology also used the Long Count, which recorded the number of days from a mythological starting point. Additional lunar, Venus, eclipse, and planetary cycles were tracked in inscriptions and manuscripts.
These calendars were used to organise ceremonies, divination, rulership, planting, warfare, historical records, and astronomical observation. Their structure reflects sophisticated arithmetic and long-term study of recurring celestial events.
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- Source / publisher: Wikipedia
- URL type: WWW
- Credits: Wikipedia
- URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_calendars