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The Mayan CalendarToday's Date is: This is one of the most fascinating calendars and dates from around the year 3114 BCE. There are various elements that make it up, each of which operates independently of the others. These are the Haab, Tzolkin and the Long Count. The HaabThis element of the calendar was the civil element and most closely resembles our calendar in that it has a "year" of 365 days. The year is split into 18 "months" of 20 days each, with a period of five days at the end, called Uayeb. The years are not numbered, just an indication of the recurrence of the months. The months are as follows:
The days within each of these months were numbered 0 to 19, so the first month would run from 0 Pop to 19 Pop then following on to 0 Uo and so on. Uayeb was numbered from 0 to 4. The TzolkinThis was the religious element of the calendar, and consisted of two cycles of 20 and 13 days respectively. The days in the 20-day cycle were named as follows:
Alongside this cycle was a 13-day cycle with days numbered from 1 to 13. These two cycles running side by side produced a period of 260 days, each with its own designation, after which the cycle would repeat. So, the first 30 days of each "year" would be as follows:
When a date was written down in full, the Tzolkin date was followed by the Haab date, thus giving each day a unique designation over 52 Haab years. The date at the time of writing is 10 Imix 19 Mol (10th Sept 2005). Tomorrow will be a new month in the Haab and the date will be 11 Ik 0 Chen. The Long CountBecause the years weren't counted, another system was needed to work out dates over longer periods, and the long count was devised for this purpose. The smallest unit in the count was a Kin, equal to one day. There were, as per the Haab, 20 days in a month. This period was called an Uinal. A period of 18 Uinal comprised one Tun, equal to 360 days. The complete count is as follows:
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