The Mesoamerican Calendar 

1:50 It is the "Vigesimal system" not "Vegesimal system"

I'm from Mexico and even tho I like learning history, I kinda have always left the history of my own country and ancestors aside. Finding this channel is the highlight of my week, even tho it doesn't centers only in Mexico, I'm very excited to learn more about the cultures that flourished in this territory

3:17 "Pretty simple, right? Not too difficult to learn!" If that was simple then I must be slow because I'm still trying to process it all.

My parents are from Yucatán, Mexico so i have grown up seeing the Mayan calendar but never actually understood how it worked. This is really impressive.

Spent time in Guatemala in the highlands with the K'iche (or Quiche, as I knew them). The base-20 system was fun to learn, and the number 20 was called "juwinak," which was a contraction for "jun winak," or "one person." So the supposition that 20 was based on 10 fingers and 10 toes is not unreasonable.

As a lay student of Mesoamerican history, I really appreciate the information in your videos and how it is explained. I'm glad to have come across your channel and look forward to seeing more!

I feel like for base 20 counting system it's more likely they used both sides of their hands versus hands and feet. Count to ten with your palms up, them flip them over and keep going up to 20.

I can only imagine what was recorded in the Mayan books and codexes that Diego De Landa burned in the mid sixteen century. With as accurate as the Maya were with dates and how much they loved to write about themselves, they must have inscribed an amazing amount of information It’s no wonder De Landa wrote that while he burned the Mayan historical texts the native people wailed in agony over their books which made him curious. After all the Maya were kind of huge nerds. They were loosing their meticulous accounts of history and religion/mythology. So sad. De Landa I wish you were never born.

The 20 days represent our fingers and toes and the 13 months represent our joints: ankles, knees, hips, wrist, elbow, shoulder, and neck. This represents the 260 day calendar. Xichen itza has 91 steps on each side with one platform on the top to make 365 steps. So much interesting and intelligent findings with the maya people!

wow this calendar is actually really cool, love the cyclical nature of it versus our linear calendar

These dudes where really smart like holy moly ;-;

The Wayeb for Mayans or Nemontemi for Mexicas was not an unlucky time as the video suggests. According to the teacher Ocelocoatl Ramírez these were days of fasting, meditation, and self-care. Similar to how you take a car in to get a tune up, our bodies are also in need of some care. Other than that I appreciate learning about the count in English. Thanks

After this I'm both in awe of the mesoamerican calendar and thankful for the simplicity of the calendar I use. Although I guess if you dig deep into things like leap years or the julian/gregorian shift, that calendar can also get quite complicated.

Found your channel by happy accident. Thank you for this wealth of information! You've definitely earned a new subscriber after watching three of your videos back to back. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Good video, looking forward to the rest!

Good summary. Impressed you provide a list of sources and credits.

I have to say both. Amazed at their calendar and glad I have the one I do. Thank you for going over this with us. Now I know I can count to Twenty. I think the most interesting part is that so many of shared the same basic calendar.

WOW - I had heard bits and pieces about their calendars... but this really is impressive and amazing. Thank you for going through the details in this way! I really appreciate your methods of explanation and presentation - Keep up the Great Content!!

There really needs to be a mobile app or a website with virtual Maya calendars that you can play around with like you did in the video. I'm legitimately stupid with numbers, but you made it a little easier to understand

I have followed the haab for 12+ years and think you did a great job on the piece.

There's a remarkable dearth of intelligent videos on RU-vid explaining the Mesoamerican calendar, and intelligent content about Mesoamerica more broadly. This is excellent.

Thank you I love these!

Random theory: if you make a lunar calendar where you only count 21 days after every full moon (for some reason), a year would be almost exactly 260 days (really 259.7333), so maybe they had a calendar like that once. I can't help but notice that 260 is almost exactly the amount of weekdays in a year, which makes me imagine a strange scenario where an ancient insane Meso-American dictator effectively bans their culture's equivalent of weekends.

very helpful video, thanks

Excellent video, really interesting

I am really enjoying your videos, thank you.

Wow! Thank you for making this information accessible

Thank you for your work on these peoples.

Great visualization. The specific day quality is intersting to feel.

Really wonderful! Quite the education, thank you for taking the time.

Just, wow!. Thanks for another great video.✌️

Absolutely interesting how such calendars were created! Excellent program.

That was amazing! Thank you so much

Thank you for these videos I recently found your Channel and I have a lot of videos to watch now😅

Excellent video!

I am both amazed and thankful

I love this channel so much, please keep making more!!

Absolutely fascinating. Thank you!

Great stuff!

Thank you so much for this great channel and information! My roots are Mexican and English though growing up in ENgland all my life I have longed to connect with my Mexican roots. This channel really deepens that connection so thank you!

Thank you for this!

Thanks for sharing this, Im mexican and really intersted in the ancient cultures, however, because education is mostly focus on the last 200 years, I really have only learned about it recently, half youtube and half from indigenous teachers that my mom knew

Been watching all your vids, keep up the great work, it's hard to find alot of in depth content on ancient Americas, can't wait for your El Mirador vid to drop, any hints to what you are working on now?

Great video

Both in awe and thankful.

I love your channel!

The Aztec Sun Stone (the first image used in the video) is not a calendar although historically thought to be one. It's now believed to be a platform for gladiatorial combat.

Thank you my teacher

Super interesting, thank you!

I have an assignment on this due in 2 days, this streamlined most of the important information into very a understandable video. thank you

Very interesting video and good explanation! It is easy to get lost with a language that doesn't resemble any of the ones one knows - and the crammed, stylized weird symbols don't help either, but you're doing a great job! (And honestly: a story about Kyle, Kevin, Ken and Kaleb get's confusing enough.... especially if it goes on for a hundred years and they all start naming their sons after their best buddies!

This is so cool. I would love to replicate something similar for my DnD homebrew setting

This really opens my mind

That was great. Enjoyed it immensely. The only other utube video I saw on the "Mayan" calender that really good was where it was proposed the reason for some of the longer cycles was related to multiples of the orbit lengths of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. This sort of gives the idea that the cyclic nature of our solar system effects the cyclic nature of life on earth and again promotes the idea that time is a cycle or orbital in nature, and not linear. I was trying to find that utube video when I came across yours! Many thanks.

Amazing! Thank you so much!!!!

Love the channel. Would love to see a breakdown of yaqui

Outstanding

My search was “how do we reconcile ancient Mayan dates with modern dates” you nailed it! thank you for the awesome video.

Very informative videos friend thank you! (btw, I would love to know what font that is, big fan.)

The way the Sacred Calendar counts days looks quite similar to how the Chinese Sexagenary Cycle counts days. The Sexagenary Cycle employs a 10/12 combination of naming days (compared to Sacred Calendar's 13/20) which forms a 60-day cyrcle that intertwined with the normal 30-day months. It could also be used to name years as well, thus creates a 60-year cyrcle.

Very fascinating, I'm not one for math but this is a interesting topic to learn more & understand fully. Especially if it corresponds with our every day life cycle

This was freaking amazing

Amazing. Ty!

i hope this channel blows up

I was saving watching this episode until last, until I saw the others first. I was not disappointed. Thank you for the respect , sensitivity and attention to detail you give to these topics. It is heart warming. Thank you . 🙏🙏👏👏🤘🤘

Outstanding 💪 THANKS 🙏

This video is awesome. Lord Of The Night sounds like something from Game of Thrones.

Didn’t really understand the calender, but love your enthusiasm

I remember there was a cool bar in the meatpacking district in NYC back in the 90s -- the 1990s -- called Baktun, and it was smooth, adobe, sandstone interior, almost similar in style to the Mos Eisley bar in SW, but it was definitely based on the Mayan calander, and the only cheap beer they sold, and only in cans, was Tecate -- no Bud, Coors, or Miller. It was definitely a scene! Alas, the bar, as well as the scene, ended up like the ancient Mayan civilization and it is long gone.

This and your Olmec video really drives home that, if we are going to refer to the myriad north-afro-euro-near-asian cultures that used the 7-day-week as a single "Western Civilization", then we must do the same with Meso-America (plus the north american and south american cultures influenced by them). Tin Foil Hat Time: were the Mississippians influenced by Meso-America? And do we know anything about their own calendar? I look at stuff from Cahokia on wikipedia, ,and it feels like theres a similar art style happening there to some Meso-American stuff. Love your channel, so glad I found it. Episode Request: Effigy Mounds? (I'm a Wisconsinite, so... a little selfish there :P)

What is the calendar round date that follow 4 Ajaw 8 Kumku ?

In several Mayan languages, the word for "twenty" is either the same as, or very similar to, the word for "man" or "person." In Guatemala there are some differences between language groups about when to observe the completion of the 260-count but, I believe, the names may have in some cases changed as Mayan languages diverged. Many communities have a "day counter" ( "aj q'ij") who keeps track of the names of the days, important for remembering auspicious days, etc. An anthropologist colleague of mine discovered that hand signs that women used to indicate the phase of the moon (when calculating gestation), matched hand signs in calendar inscriptions from the classical period that apparently denoted lunar phases. I hope you address in future videos something about Mesoamerican astronomy. Several classical Maya sites are oriented toward Venus and other heavenly bodies besides "just" the sun and moon.

My god that was complex and I love it

¿DÓNDE ESTÁN LOS SUBTÍTULOS EN ESPAÑOL Y PORTUGUÉS?

Mind blowing how clever they were

could you please create a playlist with all your videos? because youtube "watch all" doesn't allow us to reverse it!

i think we dont know enugh of the history of the pre columbian Americas

I bet your birthday translated to the long count would make a pretty strong password.

Congratulation. Thank you for so interesting facts,about my mayan culture.

Pretty sure I've binge watched everything. Thank you

4:13 and that tradition continues to this day! Although the days pertain to specific saints, it can be yet another way these people kept their customs alive

Can someone explain to me further how to right the long count date:(

Sir, the "calendar" graphic is not a calendar. It is thought by many that it is but it is not. It is an Aztec sun stone and it depicts the five consecutive worlds of the sun from Aztec cosmology. Please, do not confuse them.

@13:20 did I understand correctly that they dated/anchored their Calendar to ~3500 bc (5000 yr ago) and they said that the previous world ended ~5000 yr before that? (14 baktun) for a total of ~10,000 years ago?

Quick question, how did the meso American calendar handle the slow drift of the calendar without leap years?

9:53 where do you get that number? 52 years, excluding leap years, is 18,980 days so I wanted to check if it's a typo or I missed something

Cipactli is pronouned /sipaktli/. C in classical nahuatl is used the same way as in spanish, remember. /s/ before e and i and /k/ before a and o. Atlcahualo means "The water(s) leave".

Thankfully in awe.

How did they adjust their calendar for the "leap year" days?

This is how my Grandfather 91.6%Mesoamerican Jose Lino Sandate Morales was named!! Born September 23, 1940!! Family from San Luis Potosi born Brewster TEXUS!!

Y like these calendars, after a while I get dizzy and do time travell !!

I think I will have to watch this twenty times before I understand it all.

i think 260 is also the number of days between the two yearly zeniths at a certain latitude in the Maya area

MUCHÍSIMAS GRACIAS! estoy haciendo mi tesis de licenciatura y ha sido muy difícil para mí entender las explicaciones sobre los calendarios en la bibliografía especializada, gracias por tan buena explicación! Saludos desde México!

Also, if my calculations are correct, the First Creation according to Maya started on 16th of november 8239 b.c.e.

Mine and my friends achievements will ecco thru time~!

So the Calendar Round completes one cycle every 52 years, and this calendar is a combination of the 260 day calendar and the 365 day solar calendar. The Long Count Calendar counts the numbers of days but it does try to approximate a solar year because it multiples 20 days by 18, and not the normal 20, to get 360. (I assume the Maya wanted to avoid fractions and not multiply 20 by 18.2621 to get 365.242 days in a solar year). One Baktun is 144,000 days and one great cycle completes in 13 Baktuns, which is 1,872,000 million days. 1,872,000 days is about ~5125 solar years if you use 365.242 as the number of days in a solar year. But the Long Count uses a 360 day solar year. So if you divide 1,872,000 by 360 you get exactly 5200 solar years, again using 360 days as a year. The Calendar Round completes in 52 years, and Long Count in 5200 years. Is this a coincidence or is it by design?

Their calendar is pretty amazing. I’d never know what day it was. I just barely know as it is.

just to add to the why of the 260 days of tzolkin, its 20*13, which are both sacred numbers to the mayas for a *number* of reasons

This will be the first youtube video to win an Oscar.