Reality, Space, and Time for the Maya

The Maya of Mesoamerica had diverse and intricate views about their reality. Inspired by the space around them the land, the heavens, and the underworld stimulated their beliefs of reality. These ideas inspired their investigations of the world around them and influenced the conclusions that they made about astronomy and the tracking of time.
Rather then our society’s emphasis on Economics as a way to model our reality, the Maya focused on religion and ritual. Mayan religious language described the “place of humans in nature, the workings of the sacred world, and the mysteries of life and death,” just like our own religions do today. The difference was that their religion also covered how the “ordered world” worked, with political and economic matters included.1 It is important to note at first that Religion was so intertwined with every part of Maya life that it cannot be separated into a separate aspect of their culture.2
While our society has constructed a definition of our physical reality vested in scientific facts and a spiritual reality based on religious creed, the Maya lived in the “material manifestation of the spiritual and the spiritual as the essence of the material.” For the Maya there were two dimensions, on
that they lived in and one of the gods, the dead, and other paranormal beings. The actions of the beings of both worlds impacted those on the other world. Supernatural entities could influence the living’s lives, “bringing disease or health, disaster or victory, life or death, prosperity or misfortune.” But the gods and spirits of ancestors needed the sustenance that only the living could provide, making the relationship between the heavens and the earth one of mutual benefit.3
The many Mayan gods were mostly personifications of nature and forces that were identified with them. Ancestors were also worshiped, especially noble ancestry, with little differentiation between them and gods. The most important deities were those associated with agriculture, such as sun, wind, and rain gods.4
Guiding it all were the Priest kings who could wield power in both dimensions and by rituals could balance each.5 All of the victories and failures as well as the pain and comicality of life was seen as a part of the “inevitable result of cosmic and ancestral necessities.”6 Maya reality was anchored to their understanding of their world. The Maya world was made
of three levels. The Middleworld was that of this earth, designed to “flower and bear fruit by the blood of kings.” Above that was the “starry arch of heaven” and below this the “dark waters of the Underworld.”7 But these different dimensions were not entirely separate. All of these regions of existence were alive and full of power.8
The Sky was represented by the crocodile-like monster which shed its blood in the form of rain. 9 The Middleworld was also sacred. The earth was on the back of a turtle or Caiman floating on a primordial sea. 10 Sacred places were caves and mountains where power and holy nature were most imbued. Humans built inside the god made power point matrix creating a second matrix of power points that complemented the other. 11
Xibalba12 or the Otherworld was similar to our notion of an underworld. Xibalba was a landscape filled with plants, animals, and various other inhabitants as well as structures. Kings and shamans could pass into Xibalba while in ecstatic trance to commune with the spirits and gods there. At night Xibalba moved from under the earth to replace the sky.13
While the four cardinal directions had significance for the Maya the primary axis was that of the path of the sun in the daytime sky.Each of the directions had its own tree, bird, color, and gods as well as rituals associated to that god.14 God K or Kawil, a “small manikin-like god,” “ruled the appropriate direction during that quadrant time. There were four such gods, each characterized by a long-nosed face, a mirror in the forehead, a smoking celt piercing the mirror, and often a serpent foot.” 15
East was represented by red because it was the birth place of the sun. Unlike our own culture East was always found on the top of Maya maps. North, “the side of heaven” was white, because it was the direction in which the cooling rains of winter came. North was also noted as the place of the North Star, the point in which the entire sky pivots. The West was black because it was the place in which the almighty sun died. Finally, the right hand of the sun was yellow South.16
The center of the Maya world map was also significant. It was colored blue-green. It too had a bird, gods, and a tree that symbolized it.
That tree was the Wacah Chan which means Six Sky or Raised Up Sky.17 This was the World tree, and it grew between all of the worlds. Its trunk
went through Middleworld, its roots into the Otherworld, and its branches soared into the heavens.18
The World Tree which connected all of the three realms was not located in one particular place but became manifest by ritual at any man made or natural place. It was also, and most importantly, manifested in the king. He could bring “it into existence as he stood enthralled in ecstatic visions atop his pyramid-mountain.” 19 Communicating to the Otherworld was symbolized in the Vision Serpent and the Double-headed Serpent Bar the most almighty of images.20
The World Tree was brought into being through the ecstasy of bloodletting ceremonies. The king manifested it from the middle of the temple, opening a doorway to the Otherworld. 21 In the bloodletting ceremonies, both before the people and privately, the Vision Serpent could be seen rising amongst the symbolic clouds of incense smoke. This act was a symbol of communication between the two worlds.22 A painting of the cosmos as the Maya knew it was made depicting the maw of the Otherworld. It was placed on a tripod palate that was symbolically opening the portal
The Maw of the Otherworld was that of a skeletal-jawed serpent, with the “life bearing waters of the earth and below them flow the dark, fecund waters of the Underworld.” The top of the image depicts the Cosmic Monster containing “the great ancestral Sun and Venus.” Dominating the Center is the World Tree which is emerging from the head of the god Chac-Xib-Chac also known as the Eveningstar “as he rises from the black waters of the portal.” The World Tree splits, one branch transforming into the Vision Serpent. From this branch “the ancestral dead and gods of the Underworld” who act “as the forces of nature and destiny,” communicate with the king through the Vision Serpent’s mouth. 23
The Shamans and Priest kings could conjure entities from the Otherworld bringing them and their powers to our Middleworld. The entities materialization was brought about through a ritual bloodletting. 24 After being brought into the human world the entities of the Otherworld could then enter terrain features, ritual objects and even the shaman practicing the ceremony. 25 When places, objects, and people were no longer actively using their powers they could use rituals to contain and use the powers later.26
These bloodletting communication ceremonies took place on the pyramids and in the plaza’s of the cities. The city layouts were built to resemble “the sacred landscape generated by the gods at creation.” 27 The many different places inside the city were named in ways that formalized this symbolism. Symbolic trees, and mountains, and caves were prevalent among the cities structures. The “pyramid’s and temple were often decorated with images,” depicting them as mountains, their doors were metaphoric cave mouths, openings to the mountains heart.28 The pyramid or “royal mountain” held the cave or entrance to the Otherworld. This center of the Pyramid was the place that the World Tree grew from the portal to the Otherworld.29 This symbolism, of the World tree growing from the middle of the Pyramid, was that of the Ceiba tree that often grew at the mouths to natural caves. 30 Some structures could even be used to track the movement of the stars. The most famous king of Copan, 18-Rabbit built a “stone forest” of stalae at his Great Plaza. Portraying himself on these stelae in the ritual costumes of gods of the creation myth and the as the World Tree. The stalae were placed in a way that tracked the movements of Venus and other planets. 31
Like Astrologers, the Maya had specialists in time and movement of the heavens. These shamans tracked the sky’s stars and planets interpreting the most beneficial time for events to occur with the most success. “Ritual, war, trade, marriage, accession, and other social activities were more likely to succeed if they were conducted at the proper place and time.” But the enormous power found in the knowledge of these astronomical patterns had to be harnessed through ritual. 32
Xibalba was the most important realm when it comes to the Maya notions of time. As afore said, The Otherworld changed places with the sky of the day’s sun every night revealing the night sky laden with the stars and planets of the universe. The Maya regarded, constellations, moons, planets, and stars as all living beings that “interacted with the cycles, natural and social,” of the Maya Middleworld. Knowledge of Xibalba was more then looking at the stars out of simple curiosity. The astronomical patterns were seen as the “gods, spirits, and ancestors,” interacting with the Maya of the Middleworld. Life for all, both noble blood and commoner was directed by
the astronomical patterns. The Maya who didn’t align their life with the stars would pay the consequences. 33
The Maya shamans had to become adroit in perceiving symmetrical and repetitious patterns, occurring both in cosmological and in ordinary time. Codifying these calendrical cycles the Maya found that they overlapped creating a “matrix of complex ritual in which the rhythms of village life, elite politics, inter community warfare, trade, and interactions with Otherworld beings played themselves out.” 34
Like us the Maya saw time as a way of remembering the events of the past in a linear way, giving things a date of origin in which to create a history of that thing. One striking difference between the Maya time and our own system stems from the Maya system of counting. Unlike our own system that was derived from a ten based system modeled after our fingers. Maya numbers are based on twenty, which was derived from counting all of their fingers and toes. While we mark the passage of decades the Maya tracked passes of twenty year cycles 35
Around the 3rd Century AD Maya mathematicians made important discoveries that would help them in their understanding of the sky and their
subsequent development of their calendar systems. First the concept was the notion of zero or a figure that depicted completeness. The next advancement was a, “vigesimal counting system in which unities acquired value according to positional functions.” 36 Vigesimal systems are those that count by twenty.
The Maya number system was much more simple then ours, using only three symbols. A dot was used for one, a bar for was used five and several different symbols were used for zero. The Maya could piece together larger numbers from these three parts. A single day was represented with a dot while four days were represented by four dots. The fifth day was represented with a bar and the sixth with a bar and a dot. The number ten was represented by two bars and the numbers went on in this fashion. 37
Another striking difference in the Maya calendar from our own is the absence of fractional day counts in our count of a total year. Our full year is 365.25 days while the Maya never used this fraction of a day in their calculations. Of course there is no such thing as a quarter day so we have a 366 day year every four years or what we call a leap year. The Maya just ignored this complicated fraction, and the notion of years with extra days. 38
The oldest and most used way of tracking time in Mesoamerica was a system using thirteen numbers and twenty day signs with a total cycle of 260 days. 39 For the Maya this most important calendar cycle was called the Sacred Round or Tzolkin by modern scholars. The Tzolkin’s thirteen numbers run one through thirteen and correlate with a day sign. The day signs are Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan, Chicchan, Cimi, Manik, lamat, Muluc, Oc, Chuen, Eb, Ben, Ix, Men, Cib, Caban, Etz’nab Cauac, and Ahau. So one day in the Tzolkin might be 8 Imix, the next day would be 9 Ik, then 10 Akbal. The thirteen numbers then begin at one again after counting the thirteenth day. Once the day signs reach Ahau they would start over with Imix being the next sign. As Schele and Freidel explain “One day following the other just as for us Monday follows Sunday every seven days forever.”
Ancient Maya also kept track of the phases of the moon, Venus, and other planets. All of these different cycles contributed to the distinct characteristics of each day. 40 There were many other cycles that each day might fall into. Each day had its own characteristics based on the combination of positions that it held in the many different cycles of the calendars. 41
The Maya believed that time recapitulated itself. “Scrutiny of past events, along with calendrical and astronomical concordances, provided prognostications of what would happen in the future.” 42
The Maya also used a 365 day cycle which was divided into eighteen months of twenty days. This system left a five day short month called Uayeb or “the resting or sleep.” “Called both a Haab and a Vague Year by modern scholars, this cycle mimics the solar year, but like the 260-day cycle, it is a count of whole days, one following the other in endless progression without any adjustment to the fractional remainder of the true solar year.”
Each month in the 365 day Haab calendar had its own name and then was numbered between one through 19. The twentieth day of every month was also the seed bed of the next month. Appearing on their calendars not as the 20th day of the month but as the seating of the next month, an unnumbered first day of the next month. But this seating called a Chum is not a zero number in the month but like the beginning and end of the new and old months. The Haab months were as follows, Pop, Uo, Zip, Zotz’ Zec, Xul, Yaxkin, Mol, Ch’en, Yax, Zac, Ceh, Mac, Kankin, Muan, Pax, Kayab, Cumku, with the Uayeb five day month last. The Calendar Round is the combination of both the Tzolkin and Haab calendars. This is the famous 52
year cycle that reoccurs every 18,980 days. So if you started the count off on the first day from our description of day signs we would get 1 Imix, and if we said that it was the first day of the Haab month of Pop then we would have 1 Imix Pop. This would be the first day of the thirteen day cycle, the first day in the day sign cycle and the first day in the month of the Haab. When the nineteenth day of Pop rolled around it would be 6 Cauac Pop. The next day, the twentieth day, would be 7 Ahau and it would be the Chum of the months Pop and Uo.
Linda Schele and David Freidel explain in their book “A Forest of Kings,” that the ancient Maya divided time into four, 819 day quadrants that represented the four cardinal directions.43 While the reason for the 819 day quadrants of time is unknown the sacred numbers 7, 9, and 13 when multiplied together equal 819.44 The Maya also had a nine day cycle in which the Lords of the Night ruled. One after the other these nine lords of the night succeeded each other like our days of the week. 45
The Long Count also known as the Initial Series is one of the most amazing scientific advancements of the ancient Maya. We don’t know who
invented the calendar but it is, aside from the Mayan language, the “most celebrated element of the Classic Great Tradition.” The earliest monuments with sculpted Long Count dates were found places like the Pacific Coast of Guatemala and the Gulf Coast of Mexico. 46
For the Maya their calculations of the many different cycles were used as a linear countdown from a day zero.47 Scholars today refer to this “era based calendar” as the Long Count. Its basic unit is the 360 day year called a Tun or “stone” in Mayan. These 360 day years, marked by putting a stone in the ground. 48 The Tun consisted of 18 months of twenty days like that of the Haab. Called Uinic these months name was derived from the Mayan word for human being, “since humans had twenty fingers and toes.” 49 The days in a Uinic were called Kin. Twenty Tuns were called a Katun, multiply that number by 20, and 400 years were called a Baktun. Each collection of years in multiples of twenty had a new name on toward infinity. 50
When writing their dates the Maya used place notation. But instead of writing left to right, with smallest dates to largest dates, the Maya depicted
their dates from the zero year in columns with the lowest cycle at the bottom and the highest at the top.51 This zero year of the Long Count calendar fell on 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ahau, 8 Cumku of the Calendar Round with the Ninth Lord of the Night Ruling. 52 Set in this way all of time could be calculated from this zero point. According to the Maya Long Count the zero date was 4 Ahau 8 Cumk’u. This was the day in which twenty of the first cycles were set at thirteen. That is to say that the 400 year cycles, 8000 year cycles, 160,000 year cycles and 32,000,000 year cycles and so on, were all set at their thirteenth place. 53 In our Gregorian calendar the Zero year is August 11 3114 BC. 54 We don’t understand why they choose the date that they did for the zero point but some archaeologists believe it has ties to Teotihuacán. 55
If we were to try to bring the highest cycle of these thirteen’s in the zero date to one it would take 41,943,040,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Tuns. Remember that a Tun is a 360 day year. 56 This shows that the Classic Maya understood time on a humongous cyclic scale. The scale was so huge that time could appear linear. “The creation date is a point on ever larger circles within circles within circles of time.” 57
The dates of the Long Count appear as a series of numbers that
represent a cycle period in their chronological order. “For example a sequence that runs 9 Baktuns, 15 Katuns, 6 Tuns, 14 Uinals , and 6 Kins indicates the collective number of days that has elapsed since 11 August 3114 BC,” this Long Count date correlates with our Gregorian date May 1, 738 BC. When the conventional notation of Mayanists is applied to this number it appears as 9.15.6.14.6. For the Maya the first number in this sequence is significant just as the 19 in the year 1979 is important in telling is what century the ’79 occurred in. Scholars had discovered the way to read the Long Count Dates by the early twentieth century but a disagreement on how to translate them into our own dates was solved only in the late fifties and early sixties by radio carbon analysis. 58
The Maya Long Count had been largely abandoned by the 10th century. But the Northern Maya used a similar system called the u kahlay katunab or Count of the Katuns. 59 Like the Katuns of the Long count these consisted of 7200 days or about 19.7 of our solar years. Each Katun was broken into twenty, 360 day Tuns. In the Count of the Katuns, every thirteen were counted for a total of 256 Tuns or what they called a May. With this system, calendrical events could be recycled approximately 256
solar years. This system gave up its counting of the many cycles other then the May, Katun, and Tun. “What happened in one specific time during one Katun cycle could be used to predict or prophesy what would happen during the recurrence of that Katun,” explained David Webster in his book “the Fall of the Ancient Maya. 60 By the 16th Century Mayas could follow a sequence of Katuns back 1000 years. 61
The individual units in the Count of the Katuns are all factors of twenty except the Tun. Instead of 20 x 20 or 400 years like the Calendar Round the later system used 20 x 18 or 360. This number is closer to the solar year and that is probably the reason the equations changed.62 Monuments were erected at the completion of a Katun or a Botun a five year milestone in honor of the elapsing of the time period.
Recording the histories of Katuns was making prophesy. What happened in this Katun could happen again in 256 years and on and on. Webster quotes Grant Jones who says, “the Katun historian was a prophet priest who potentially wielded immense political influence and power, for he could rewrite the past in order to prewrite the future.” The prophet shamans, who were often in charge politically as well, could report the event that were
beneficial to them or add their own events that would advance their own agenda. “Prophetic history was a dynamic, ever-changing accounting of time and events that, far from freezing the past as ‘fact’ could always be used to reinterpret and rewrite the past for the convenience of the present.” 63 Freidel and Schele agree asserting that the “matrix of sacred power” also inspired politics. 64 “Political strategies and social events had to be calculated within a complex geography of sacred time, just as they were in sacred space. It was vitally important.” 65
Many of the days in these many calendars were celebrated much like Christmas and the Forth of July are in our culture. These holidays differed from ours because they were about more then just what happened in the past. These holidays were actually a “reiteration of the essential events that had happened, continued to happen, and would always happen on these days.” “For the Maya, history affected the structure of time just as ritual affected the nature of matter.” 66
The most important sources of information about the Maya calendar
are the Paris, Madrid, and Dresden codices. These accordion style books were named after the cities they once resided? A fourth codex, the Groiler codex, was discovered and published in 1973 by Michael Coe. These are ancient Mayan books that hold almanac information for the timing of religious rituals. The books were made of a paper made of beaten bark and covered with a thin layer of plaster. 67 The pages were enclosed between two boards which were decorated. 68 These are the only pre-Columbian Maya books that exist. The moist climate that the Maya inhabit and the burning of books by the Christians who attempted to eradicate the Maya old ways have left no other books.
The contents of these almanacs cover, through glyphs and illustrations, the calendar cycles of the Maya. Each day had different gods and actions that corresponded. Venus, and the Sun’s orbits as well as solar eclipses were tracked in astronomical charts. These books were believed to be used to train priests in astronomy and astrological prediction69 because it was mainly priests who were literate but a few nobles could read. 70
The records of their religious and scientific beliefs are all but
destroyed and gone. From the earliest use of the Sacred Round, was just the start of the Maya exploration into time. With their advancement in mathematical and astronomical skills they developed the Calendar Round and the Long Count. Tracking the earths cycles, and the cycles of the stars and planets then marking dates related to their movements was just the beginning. The use of this knowledge coupled with their ideas of reality and space created a vast and powerful culture that maintained control of the people and kept them happy.
Endnotes
1David Freidel, and Linda Schele, A Forest of Kings (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1990), 65.
2David Webster, The Fall of the Ancient Maya (London: Thames & Hudson, 2002), 147.
3Mary Ellen Miller and Linda Schele, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 1986), 181, 193-4; quoted in David Freidel, and Linda Schele, A Forest of Kings (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1990), 65.
4Webster, 100.
5Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 65.
6 Ibid., 66.
7Ibid., 66.
8Ibid., 66.
9Ibid., 66.
10J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction (Washington DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1950), 10-1; quoted in Ibid., 60.
11Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 67.
12Ibid.,66.
13Ibid.,66.
14Ibid.,66.
15Ibid., 78.
16Ibid., 66.
17Ibid., 66.
18Ibid., 66-7.
19Ibid., 67-8.
20David Stewart, “Blood symbolism in Maya Iconography,” in Maya Iconography, ed. Elizabeth Benson and Gillett Griffin. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 175-221; quoted in Ibid., 68.
21Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 68-9.
22Ibid., 69.
23Ibid., 69-70.
24Ibid., 70.
25 David Freidel, and Linda Schele, The Courts of Creation: Ballcourts, Ballgrames, and Pastals to the Maya Otherworld. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990) and Miller and Schele, 43-4; quoted in Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 70.
26Ibid., 73.
27Ibid., 71.
28David Stewart, interviewed by David Freidel and Linda Schele, 1987; quoted in Ibid., 71-72.
29Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Arehaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. William R. Trask Bollingen Series LXXVI. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), Chapter 8; quoted in Ibid., 72.
30 Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 72.
31Elizabeth Newsome, “The Trees of Paradise and Pillars of the World: Vision Quest and Creaton in the Stelae Cycle of 18-Rabbit-God K, Copan” Honduras (Ph.D. diss.) University of Texas, 1991); quoted in David Freidel, Joy Parker, and Linda Schele, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path, (New York: Quill William Morrow, 1993), 147.
32Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 73.
33Ibid., 76.
34Freidel, Parker, and Schele, Maya Cosmos, 131.
35Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 78.
36Miguel León-Portilla, Time and Reality in the Thought of the Maya, 2d ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 1.
37Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 82.
38Ibid., 78.
39Freidel, Parker, and Schele, Maya Cosmos, 63-4.
40Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 81.
41Ibid., 78
42Webster, 100.
43Paul Schell has “Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts,” papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge.; quoted in Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 78.
44Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 82.
45Barbara MacLeod, interviewed by David Freidel and Linda Schele, 1987; quoted in Ibid., 79-81.
46Webster, 181.
47Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 81.
48John Justeson and Peter Mathews, “The Seating of the Tun: Further Evidence concerning a Late Preclassical Lowland Maya Stela Cult,” American Antiquity, 586-93; quoted in Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 81.
49Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 81.
50Ibid., 81-2.
51Ibid., 82.
52Ibid., 82.
53Freidel, Parker, and Schele, 61-3.
54Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 82.
55Weber, 181.
56Freidel, Parker, and Schele, 63.
57Ibid., 63.
58Weber, 183.
59Ibid., 100.
60Ibid., 101.
61Ibid., 102.
62Ibid., 182-3.
63Grant D. Jones, The Conquest of the Last Itza Kingdom (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 14-5; quoted in Webster, 101-2.
64Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 73.
65Floyd G. Lounsbury, A Rationale for the Initial Date of the Temple of the Cross at Palenque, in The Art, Iconograpy, and Dynastic Hisotry of Palenque, Part III: Proceedings of the Segunda Mesa Redonda de Palenque, Merte Green Robertson, ed. (Pebble Beach, Robert Louis Stevenson School, 1976); quoted in Ibid., 84.
66Freidel and Schele, Forest of Kings, 83.
67Freidel, Parker, and Schele, 44-5.
68Diego de Landa, Relación de las Cosas de Yucatan, trans. Alfred Tozzer Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 18 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1941), 28-9; quoted in Weber, 100.
69Freidel, Parker, and Schele, 100.
70Weber, 100.

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