Maya calendar Maya calendar The Maya calendar is a system of calendars used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in many modern communities in the Guatemalan highlands, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. The essentials of the Maya calendar are based upon a system which had been in common use throughout the region, dating back to at least the 5th century BCE. It shares many aspects with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Zapotec and Olmec and contemporary or later ones such as the Mixtec and Aztec calendars. By the Maya mythological tradition, as documented in Colonial Yucatec accounts and reconstructed
San Andrés (Mesoamerican site) suggest that writing among the Olmec was sacred and was closely tied to ritual activities.” The most important find was a fist-sized ceramic cylinder seal, likely used to print cloth. When rolled out, the seal shows two speech scrolls emanating from a bird, followed directly by a number of design elements enframing what has been interpreted as logograms for “king (sideways U shape),” "3 (three dots, according to the Mesoamerican bar and dots numbering system),” and “Ajaw (from the sacred 260-day calendar)", a designation used for both a calendar date and, in keeping with Mesoamerican custom, the name of an