How did the Maya track time with their amazing calendar?
Maya's Gear Machine
How did the Maya track time with their amazing calendar?
Long ago, in the rainforests of Central America, the Maya looked up at the sky and asked a question we still ask today: what day is it? But they didn't answer with one calendar. They built a whole machine of calendars, spinning together like a clever set of clockwork gears.
Their first calendar was about everyday life, the way ours is. It was called the Haab', and it counted 365 days — the time it takes Earth to circle the Sun. The Maya split it into eighteen months of twenty days each. Do the math and that's only 360.
