Title: AZTEC CALENDER
1AZTEC CALENDER
- BY ANTHONY CABRERA
- Period. 3 pre-calculus
2HISTORY
The Aztecs, or Mexica as they called themselves,
were the elite of a militaristic empire focused
in Central Mexico when the Spanish conquistadores
landed in America at the beginning of the 16th
century CE. The Aztecs originated in the
semi-arid environments of northern Mexico as one
of the many barbarian or "Chichimec" tribes. They
arrived at the fertile Valley of Mexico most
likely during the 14th century CE, and found the
land already settled and divided by city states.
They built their city at the marshes of Lake
Texcoco, and quickly adopted much of the culture
and language of their new neighbors.
3WHAT IS THE AZTEC CALENDER?
- The Aztec calendar is the CALENDAR system that
was used by the AZTECS as well as other
PRECOLUMBIAN peoples of central MEXICO. It is one
of the MESOAMERICAN CALENDARS, sharing the basic
structure of calendars from throughout ancient
MESOAMERICA. Its recognized as the world's most
accurate calendar, more so than the Gregorian
system (based on the Julian calendar) that we use
today.
4HOW MANY AZTEC CALENDERS ARE THERE?
- There were actually two Aztec Calendars and they
were both based on the MAYAN CALENDARS. One of
them, called the Xiuhpohualli Calendar consisted
of 365 days and was used for farming and normal
daily life. The other, known as The
Tonalpohualli, had 260 days and was used for
worship and observing rituals. This calendar, the
name means 'day count' in English, is the one
described first.
5The Tonalpohualli - the Aztec Sacred Calendar
- Each day has both a number and a symbol and both
are needed to define the date. The numbers run
from 1 to 13 and there are 20 different symbols.
Day one is defined by number 1 and symbol 1. Day
two is defined by number 2 and symbol 2. This
continues until day 13 which is defined by number
13 and symbol 13. Day 14 is defined by number 1
and symbol 14, day 15 by number 2 and symbol 15.
Day 20 is defined by number 7 and symbol 20. Day
21 by number 8 and symbol 1. As 13 is not a
factor of 20 the same pair do not re-occur for
260 days and then a new sacred year starts.
6The Xiuhpohualli - The Aztec Seasonal Calendar?
- This calendar defines a year of 18 months, each
of 20 days, and five extra days, 365 days in
total. These extra days were considered unlucky
and so very little was done on them. Each year
had a name and number combination as did the days
in the The Tonalpohualli but this time there were
only 52 such combinations before repeating. This
series was known as a 'bundle'.
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8DAY SIGNS
- Day signs
- The set of day signs used in central Mexico is
identical to that used by Mixtecs, and to a
lesser degree similar to those of other
Mesoamerican calendars. - Each of the day signs also bears an association
with one of the four cardinal directions.
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