Dates

There are few things in Mayan culture more prevalent than the concept of time. The Maya were very conscience of time and how they moved through it. Evidence for this can be found in their intricate calendar system. If you look closely at any artifacts taken from dig sites, there are almost always dates written on them. The picture shown here is an example of a date (2/20/11) taken from our Gregorian calendar, converted to the Mayan calendar, then written out in the ancient glyph notation. It reads:

12.19.18.2.8

8 Lamat

1 K'ayab

G3 Lord of the Night. 

The numbers are taken from the Long Count calendar which measured how many days have passed since the last creation date (they believed in several creations) which was roughly 3114 BC. Each number is representative of a unit to measure days: 12 Bak'tun (144,0000 days ), 19 K'atun (7,200 days), 18 Tuun (360 days), 2 Winal (20 days), and 8 K'in (1 day). Therefore, someone born on February 20, 2011 have been born 1,871,328 days since the last creation!

8 Lamat is the 8th day of the month Lamat on the sacred Tzolkin calendar consisting of 260 days.

Then according to the 365 day solar calendar called the Haab, 1 K'ayab is the first day of the month K'ayab.

And there you have it - a brief explanation of Mayan calendrics.