00:00.62 archpodnet Hello and welcome back to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 107 and we have been talking about the end of the world 2012 and we have risen from the ashes and are still here. Congratulations. So I thought i'd. Take a little bit of time here and talk about the maya calendar like how it works how the maya reckon time and as an archaeologist I always like the idea of time and how we as human beings reckon it how we measure this. Kind of immeasurable thing right? We can look at time as linear going from one day to the next kind of counting things up our years are linear you know this year is 2023 it just began. Next year it'll be 2024 and so on forever you also have cyclical time where it's just cycles to repeat and repeat and repeat are months you know it goes January through December and then it repeats forever and so. In most calendar systems you have ah a combo of these sometimes 1 takes precedence over the other farming societies tend to be a bit more cyclical for obvious reasons they want to know when to plant and the harvesting harvesting cycle is really important for them and some are more linear we in our. 01:30.48 archpodnet Kind of western thought are pretty linear in the way that we Mark Time it's so funny when we when we talk about time me as an archeologist I also have a hobby of like collecting watches and I just enjoy this whole human. Watch measuring thing. 1 of my first podcasts here was on the antikythera mechanism which is a way of measuring time right? This ancient device. So how did the maya do it well as I said before they go. With base twenty. It's different for us because we're base 10 right? So we want to first understand how the my account. Ah what I mean by that is how wait wait wait edit here. Ah, got kind of flubbed. 02:34.12 archpodnet So first we want to have a good appreciation for how the maya use base 20 in their calendar system now first off before we even go forward. Ah. 02:48.17 archpodnet When they use base 20 it's actually 0 to nineteen rather than 1 to 20 isn't that weird but it will actually make sense if you think of places if you think of number places. So if I'm counting between zero and nineteen. That's in kind of the the first place like if we think of squares from bottom to top at the bottom. Let's say I have 15 things I'll put a 15 there. But if I have 21 I'll put 2 in the top 1 in the second box and a one below and that's how it works if it makes sense. It's hard to paint that picture in your mind but you go up through 19 in each box and then once it gets to 20 you put a 0 and you put a 1 in the 20 s box above. So when you're at three hundred and ninety nine your your hat the boxes below are like all full. Ah and then you go up 1 to the four hundred s box a one there. It's it's hard to explain. But. 04:03.30 archpodnet As I I know it's awkward but I bring that up in its own awkward way just to start to crack the code a little bit of how the maya would think they would count up things up through. 19 and then move forward. We count up things through 9 and then go to the tens if that makes sense. It's a little bit different way of looking at things so that matters in their calendar more on the numbering thing in a second. The maya have not 1 not 2 but 3 calendars they are the 260 day calendar the three hundred and sixty five day calendar and the long count calendar. So 3 and they're all operating at the same time the two sixty day is often referred to as like the ritual almanac. It's comprised of twenty days and thirteen numbers and how this works is both of those things start counting at the same time so you have. The first thirteen days that go with the first 13 numbers and you're like okay that's fine. But then when you get to day 14 it gets a number one and you go on from there and so you have a day name and a number right? and they're maya names like it like you'll say something like ah. 05:34.88 archpodnet Like ah 1 a how or something like that you'll you'll say the number first how this works is it takes two hundred and sixty days to get back to your original day 1 number 1 right? because the permutations I have to go through because they're odd. You have this twenty in this 13 counting so you have. You have 260 permutations of the twenty days and 13 numbers that that that count forward I know it's kind of I know it's kind of weird and wacky. But that's how that works that is the oldest of the maya calendars been around a long time. It's a bit more symbolic. Um, you know you you would want to know that. Day of your birth. It would people of this day are like this right that kind of thing it might have a bit of an astrological tinge to it. But that's the oldest one after that they added on a 3 65 which is. Is 3 65 like ours except it counts up completely different. The 3 sixty five day calendar which the maya call the hob has 18 months not 12, but eighteen months of twenty days each so that counts up we have month one of twenty days then month two of twenty days and actually remember that 0 to 19 thing I said before each month basically has day zero up to day nineteen. So you have day zero day one day two day 3 and the zero day is called the seeding of you kind of have. 07:06.53 archpodnet Like if the month name name is called up the month Pope it'll be like the seeding of pope and then it'll be pope one pop to pope 3 ah so you have eighteen months with twenty days now if you do the math you're like cankello that adds up to three sixty. it's up with that. Well the maya knew that. So at the very end of the year they would add on five days and those five days were called the yab the unlucky days. So yeah, and you have sort of negative connotation with the days of the y yeah but the end right. Now to make things even harder if you put the 260 day calendar and the three hundred and sixty five day calendar together and let's say you start them all at day 1 right? You start you start the two sixty day at day one of the twenty days and number one of the 13 you start the 3 65 at month one of 18 at day one of 20 it takes 52 years for it to reach all the way back to kind of 1 1 1 1 right to to cycle out and reset itself 52 years and that in the my world is called the calendar round so you would have a celebration at the end of a 52 year calendar round and actually what just came to me is I'm fifty years old you guys pretty soon. Dude I'm going to experience a calendar round. Oh my god I got to have a party for that one. 08:39.35 archpodnet Um, now I know I've probably destroyed your mind and that's okay, these calendars are cyclical and they just they go and go forever right? Ah, the never ending rounds of 52 on top of all that calendar number 3 is the long count now the long count calendar is simply a count of the days since a mythical start day of August Thirteenth thirty one fourteen bc it could have also been August Eleventh 31 Fourteen Bc remembered the 2 day thing. So what do I mean by mythical start date. This means that the maya didn't actually started in 30 one 14 Bc They didn't go this is day one. They probably started it a couple cycles in a couple 400 year cycles in and then talked about the past. Right? That actually makes a bit more sense historically but what's great about the long count is it just counts up the days and so what I mean by that is today would be like day 1046169 since the beginning of time. Tomorrow I'll be day 1046270 since the beginning of time you get what I mean it. It just goes day by day you just count one day at a time from the start point thousands of years ago. So each day just has a number that's it. But how do they. 10:10.59 archpodnet Record their numbers. They record it in their cyclical base twenty way. So the cycles are for the long count. You have the 400 year cycle that we already talked about then you have the 20 year cycle then you have the year then you have the month then you have the day so it's 5 things for the long count and it's all just done by numbers right? So today could be the ah thirteen four hundred years ah to twenty years fourteen years six months and four days since the beginning of time and you can do the math if you really want in the Maya world the 400 year cycle is called the bak tune that's the big 1 right? That's the twenty twelve situation a change of a boktoon and for the maya for Twenty Twelve baktoon 12 became baktoon 13 so we're currently living in baktoon 13 the cartoon is the 20 year cycle if you remember back to last time the horrific idea of Maya astronauts. The good part was that king pacall. Was a 3 katoon lord right? He ruled for over 60 years three twenty s 3 cartoons so you have the baktoon for four hundred s the cartoons for 20 s the tune is a year a single year and what I always thought was cool is the word tune also means stone. 11:41.91 archpodnet Right? So stone and year use the same word then you have the we all which is the twenty day month and then you have the keen which is a day so Baktoons Cartoons tunes ween alls and keys and in each of those if you list them from top to bottom baktoon at the top and keen at the bottom. You can just put like ah dots in each as to how many there are so you can record it really easily by the way if you want to record from 0 to 19 the maya numbering scheme is you use dots from 1 to 4 and then a bar equals 5 so. The highest recorded number you would need would be 19 which would be 3 bars 4 dots. You never get 4 bars because you go up to the next level and you just put a single dot in in base twenty. So that's how the base 28 system works with bars and dots isn't that crazy. And if you think more. Basically you could draw this out on the ground just using rocks and sticks so I could see maya people you know Maya kids I could see Maya kids you know, figuring things out with their friends using using like sticks and stones literally. To figure out how much they got and you can use very big numbers really easily right in in this world because you just go up the place you can get to 8000 really easily and so on and so forth and I'm sure a lot of you have heard that the maya had. 13:16.63 archpodnet The idea of 0 they totally did. You've heard me say it a bunch of times 0 through nineteen and zero is often symbolized with like this shell looking thing or sometimes you just leave it out or sometimes there'd even be like an x just to show that there's nothing here. So it. The idea of zero is super important as you see if you're doing 0 through 19 if you're doing these counting in base 20 places things. So with this entire calendar system. How do you write it down. The long count the 3 65 and the 62. Well what you're ultimately gonna have in the Maya world is 7 things to write down for us. We have 4 things. What I mean by that is today the damn recording this is January second 2023 so there's 3 things right? there January second so it's the second of January and it's the year Twenty Twenty three it is also a Monday so it's 4 things see what I'm saying the maya have 7 each day they're gonna record the baktoon the cartoon the tune the ween all on the kin the five things of the long count then they're gonna add a hieroglyphic for the two sixty day and a hieroglyphic for the 3 65 so seven things right. 14:51.75 archpodnet Each day has that so what makes it great for archeology is when the maya recorded this stuff in stone. We get to know the exact day when that happened oh my god that's from you know, ah bak tune ten. Whatever you know and then and then so on and it's like oh that corresponds to nine Twenty Six a d it was January Third isn't that great. So we're really lucky that the maya recorded stuff in this kind of depth with their calendar system. When we return my thoughts on 2012 if you couldn't have got those already.