Tzolkʼin
260-day calendar of the Maya civilization
The tzolkʼin (Mayan pronunciation: [t͡sol ˈkʼin], formerly and commonly tzolkin) is the 260-day Mesoamerican calendar used by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
The tzolkʼin, the basic cycle of the Maya calendar, is a preeminent component in the society and rituals of the ancient and the modern Maya. The tzolkʼin is still used by several Maya communities in the Guatemalan highlands. While its use has been spreading in this region, this practice is opposed by Evangelical Christian converts in some Maya communities.
The word tzolkʼin, meaning "division of days", is a western coinage in Yucatec Maya. Contemporary Maya groups who have maintained an unbroken count for over 500 years in the tzolk'in use other terms in their languages. For instance, the Kʼicheʼ use the term Aj Ilabal Qʼij [aχ ilaɓal qʼiχ] or Raj Ilabal Qʼij [ɾaχ ilaɓal qʼiχ], 'the sense of the day' or 'the round of the days' and the Kaqchikel use the term Chol Qʼij [t͡ʃol qʼiχ], 'the organization of time'. The names of this calendar among the pre-Columbian Maya are not widely known. The corresponding Postclassic Aztec calendar was called tonalpohualli in the Nahuatl language.
The twenty day names
The tzolkʼin calendar combines a cycle of twenty named days with another cycle of thirteen numbers (the trecena), to produce 260 unique days (the least common multiple of 20 and 13, which happens to equal 20 × 13 since the two numbers are coprime, is 260).
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