Aztec calendar

The Aztec or Mexica calendar is the calendrical system used by the Aztecs as well as other Pre-Columbian peoples of central Mexico. It is one of the Mesoamerican calendars, sharing the basic structure of calendars from throughout the region.

The Aztec sun stone, often erroneously called the calendar stone, is on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
The actual Aztec calendar consists of a 365-day calendar cycle called (year count), and a 260-day ritual cycle called (day count). These two cycles together form a 52-year "century", sometimes called the " calendar round". The is considered to be the agricultural calendar, since it is based on the sun, and the is considered to be the sacred calendar.

Tōnalpōhualli

The ("day count") consists of a cycle of 260 days, each day signified by a combination of a number from 1 to 13, and one of the twenty day signs. With each new day, both the number and day sign would be incremented: 1. Crocodile is followed by 2. Wind, 3. House, 4. Lizard, and so forth up to 13. Reed. After Reed, the cycle of numbers would restart (though the twenty day signs had not yet been exhausted), resulting in 1. Jaguar, 2. Eagle, and so on, as the days immediately following 13. Reed. This cycle of number and day signs would continue similarly until the 20th week, which would start on 1. Rabbit, and end on 13. Flower. It would take a full 260 days (13×20) for the two cycles (of twenty day signs, and thirteen numbers) to realign and repeat the sequence back to 1. Crocodile.

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 bear an association with one of the four cardinal directions.

There is some variation in the way the day signs were drawn or carved. Those here were taken from the .

Wind and Rain are represented by images of their associated gods, and respectively.

Other marks on the stone showed the current world, and the worlds before this one. Each world was called a sun, and each sun had its own species of inhabitants. The Aztecs believed that they were in the Fifth Sun, and like all of the suns before them, they would also eventually perish due to their own imperfections. Every 52 years was marked out due to the belief that 52 years was a life cycle and at the end of any given life cycle, the gods could take all they had, and destroy the world.

The 260 days of the sacred calendar were grouped into twenty periods of 13 days each. Scholars usually refer to these thirteen-day "weeks" as , using a Spanish term derived from "thirteen" (just as the Spanish term "dozen" is derived from "twelve"). The original Nahuatl term was "in cencalli tonalli" (a family of days), according to Book IV of the ''Florentine Codex''.

Each is named according to the calendar date of the first day of the 13 days in that . In addition, each of the twenty in the 260-day cycle had its own tutelary deity:

is the Aztec year () count (). One year consists of 360 named days and 5 nameless (). These 'extra' days are thought to be unlucky. The year was broken into 18 periods of twenty days each, sometimes compared to the Julian month. The

Nahuatl word for moon is but whatever name was used for these periods is unknown. Through Spanish usage, the 20-day period of the Aztec calendar has become commonly known as a .

Each 20-day period started on (Crocodile) for which a festival was held. The eighteen are listed below. The dates are from early eyewitnesses; each wrote what they saw. 's date precedes the observations of by several decades and is before recent to the surrender. Both are shown to emphasize the fact that the beginning of the Native new year became non-uniform as a result of an absence of the unifying force of after the Mexica defeat.

''Veintenas'' of the ''xiuhpōhualli''

Xiuhmolpilli

The ancient ''Mexicans'' counted their years by means of four signs combined with thirteen numbers, thus obtaining periods of 52 years, which are commonly known as ''Xiuhmolpilli'', a popular but incorrect generic name; the most correct Nahuatl word for this cycle is Xiuhnelpilli. The table with the current years:

Reconstruction of the Solar calendar

For many centuries scholars had tried to reconstruct the Calendar. A widely accepted version was proposed by Professor of the , based on the studies of and of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His correlation argues that the first day of the Mexica year was February 13 of the old Julian calendar or February 23 of the current Gregorian calendar.
Using the same count, it has been the date of the birth of , the end of the year and a cycle or "Tie of the Years", and the New Fire Ceremony, day-sign of the year , corresponding to the date February 22. A correlation by independent researcher Ruben Ochoa interprets pre-Columbian codices, to reconstruct the calendar, while ignoring most primary colonial sources that contradict this idea, using a method that proposes to connect the year count to the vernal equinox and placing the first day of the year on the first day after the equinox.

In this regard, José Genaro Emiliano Medina Ramos, a senior native nahua philosopher from San Lucas Atzala in the state of Puebla, proposes a multidisciplinary calendar reconstruction in náhuatl (‘centro de Puebla’ variant) according with his own nahua cosmosvision; and relying precisely on Ochoa's smart correlation and on Tena's presuppositions as well. His proposal was translated to Spanish and English, and codified as an academic webpage in 2023.

See also

* Aztec New Year
* Maya calendar
* Mesoamerican calendars
* Muisca calendar

Notes

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Calendar

Calendar
Obsolete calendars