Maya calendar the land of Yucatán into 13 'kingdoms'. 1897 text by Cyrus Thomas 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
Mesoamerican Long Count calendar and the 365 day Haab'. The equivalent Aztec calendars are known in Nahuatl as the tonalpohualli and Xiuhpohualli. The combination of a Haab' and a Tzolk'in date identifies a day in a combination which does not occur again for 18,980 days (52 Haab' cycles of 365 days times 73 Tzolk'in cycles of 260 days, approximately 52 years), a period known as the Calendar Round. To identify days over periods longer than this, Mesoamericans used the Long Count calendar. The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from a starting date that is generally calculated to