. Ancient civilizations of Mexico and Central America. Indians of Mexico; Indians of Central America. 112 MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA Elements of the Day Count. There is reason to believe that the Mayas had first a lunar-solar cal- endar of twelve months of thirty days each, making a year of 360 days, and that they reduced the num- ber of days in the formal month to 20 and raised the number of months in the year from 12 to 18. These changes permitted a close adjustment of the units of time with their vigesimal system of count- ing. With a truer knowledge of the length of the. Chuen Eb ©©I© Fig.
. Ancient civilizations of Mexico and Central America. Indians of Mexico; Indians of Central America. 112 MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA Elements of the Day Count. There is reason to believe that the Mayas had first a lunar-solar cal- endar of twelve months of thirty days each, making a year of 360 days, and that they reduced the num- ber of days in the formal month to 20 and raised the number of months in the year from 12 to 18. These changes permitted a close adjustment of the units of time with their vigesimal system of count- ing. With a truer knowledge of the length of the. Chuen Eb ©©I© Fig. 40. The Twenty Day Signs. The first example in each case is taken from the inscriptions and the second from the codices. year an extra five day month was added to make a year of 365 days. Beyond this the "leap year" error was calculated but not interpolated. As proof that the lunar month of thirty days preceded the formal month of twenty days, it need only be pointed out that the name for this period, uinal, seems to be connected with the name for moon, u, and that the hieroglyph for moon has the value, twenty, in the inscriptions and ancient books. Before entering into a fuller discussion of the astronomical and notational facts let us turn for. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Spinden, Herbert Joseph, 1879-1967. New York : American Museum of Natural History
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