The stars are our oldest roadmaps. They tell us where we’ve been and where we’re going. They link us to our past and give us hope for the future. They’ve guided sailors during the darkest nights and helped farmers figure out the brightest days. Latin Americans have used the stars to create calendars as far back as 36 BCE. The most well-known calendars may be Aztec calendars. Most noted by a sculpture of a large circular stone with hieroglyphics surrounding a central face, but how did they create it? What does it even mean? The Aztec Calendar wasn’t the first to be created in Mesoamerica. It all started with the Olmecs.
THE OLMEC CALENDAR
The Olmecs are the oldest known Mesoamerican culture. They originated in 1200–500 BCE. The Olmecs are an archeological culture, meaning that the artifacts that the culture left behind are thought to represent a particular society. The Olmecs are most known for two things: The creation and distribution of 16 giant carved stone head statues, situated along the Mexican Gulf Coast and the fact that they are believed to be the original creators of the Mesoamerican calendars called the Tzolkin (divine calendars covering 260 days) and the Haab (civil calendars covering 365 days.)
THE MAYAN CALENDAR
The Mayans were first thought to have originated calendars until the discovery of the Olmec calendars. The Mayans did, however, use the Olmec calendars to their advantage. The Mayan calendars are three separate calendars used simultaneously: the Long Count (Identifying the years) and the two Olmec Calendars (identifying the days), the Tzolkin and the Haab. The three calendars work together as a series of interlocking wheels of different sizes, each marking a different period. The Mayans called it the “universal cycle.” Each cycle is calculated to reset every 52 years. The last reset of the cycle was in 2012 (contrary to some expectations, the world did not end). The Mayans were the first to make a Long Count Calendar. The Long Count Calendar is a calendar system that tracks the number of days that have passed since the Maya believed human creation began on August 11, 3114 BCE. It is a non-repeating calendar that uses base-18 and base-20 counting and is widely used on monuments.
THE AZTEC CALENDAR
The Aztec calendars were based on the Mayan Calendar. They also consisted of a ritual cycle of 260 days and a 365-day civil cycle. The ritual cycle, or Tonalpohualli, contained two smaller cycles, an ordered sequence of 20 named days and a sequence of days numbered from one to 13. The 13-day cycle was significant for religious observance, and each of the 20 numbered cycles within the ritual year was associated with a different deity. Similarly, each named day was associated with a unique deity, and scholars believe that the combinations of ruling deities were used for divination. The civil year was divided into 18 months of 20 days each, plus an additional 5 days called Nemontemi. It was considered very unlucky. Like the Mayan calendars, the Aztec ritual and civil cycles returned to the same positions relative to each other every 52 years, an event celebrated as the Binding Up of the Years or the New Fire Ceremony. In preparation, all sacred and domestic fires were allowed to burn out. At the climax of the ceremony, priests ignited a new sacred fire on the breast of a sacrificial victim, from which the people rekindled their hearth fires and began feasting.
THE 2012 PHENOMENON
December 21, 2012, was the day many say the Maya predicted the world would end. The Mayans believed that the universe was destroyed and recreated at the start of each universal cycle. With the creation of the long count cycle, the Mayans believed they could accurately calculate the reset day for the universe as December 21, 2012. This was “judgment day,” if you will. Much like Y2K, the new year was thought to end life as we knew it. Catastrophes that would end life entirely while the universe rebooted. However, a 2012 article by Scientific American author Erik Vance states that it is more likely that the Aztecs predicted the apocalypse, while the Mayans just predicted the reset of their calendar. Per Vance, Aztec mythology depicted total annihilation and doom, whereas the Mayans seemed more focused on art and science. Vance writes, “Mexica [Aztec] mythology was full of wrath, death and enough cataclysmic destruction for a Hollywood movie… The Mexica regularly discussed the end of the world and sacrificed people to prevent it.” •
