Origin of Mayan symbols and their meaning

mayan symbols

Mayan symbols are all those symbols designed by the Mayan civilization. This civilization included all the Mayan peoples that inhabited Central America. It is considered that this civilization began to develop around the year 2000 a. C. and lasted until the beginning of the colonial period after the discovery of America.

Most of these images are related to the mathematical and astronomical knowledge developed by the Mayans. There are also Mayan symbols related to their hieroglyphic writing system and to represent their gods.

Tzolkin

Some of the most relevant symbols of the Mayan civilization are linked to their sacred calendar. This calendar, known today as Tzolkin, consists of a 260-day cycle.

This cycle is made up of twenty-three. This means that the schedule is first divided into 20 blocks. Each of these blocks contains 13 days. So there are a total of 260 days (20 x 13). The days of this calendar are identified with a name (out of 20 possible) and a number from 1 to 13.

The 20 denominations of the days in the Mayan calendar also symbolize a natural phenomenon. The names, meanings and symbols of these twenty names are as follows:

The Haab' Calendar

The Haab' system was the Mayan system of dividing the solar year, that is, the total time required for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.

The Haab' solar cycle was used in combination with the Tzolkin calendar. Together, they give birth to the Mayan calendar wheel that is 52 years old. This calendar wheel was used not only by the Mayan civilization but also by other pre-Columbian civilizations.

The Haab calendar divides this period into 18 blocks or months. Each of these months only covers 20 days. Apart from the days contained in these months, there are also 5 isolated days known as uayeb. Given this division, the Haab' calendar divides the solar year into 365 days (18 x 20 + 5).

The days of this calendar have been identified with a number from 0 to 19 followed by the name of the month. The last five days of the year were considered unnamed days and were only identified with the word uayeb. The Mayans believed that these days were associated with times of danger and uncertainty.

The months were shaped using Mayan glyphs that also represented a natural phenomenon. The 18 Haab' month glyphs and their meaning are as follows:

Pop: Symbol of marriage and community

Whoo: Frog, black sky

Zip: deer, red sky

Zotz: Bat, formed with the onset of winter

Tzek: death, heaven and earth

Xul: Dog

Yaxkin: New Sun

Mole: Jaguar, water and clouds

Chen: black storm and moon

Yax: Green storm and planet Venus

Zack: white storm

eh: Red storm and trees

Mac: Content

Kankin: Earth, Yellow Sun and Underworld

Moan: owl and fire

People: sowing stage

Kayak: SeamTurtle

Cummoo: crocodile and seed

Kukulkan

Kukulkan is one of the most important deities in the Mayan culture. This deity is also known as the plumed serpent and was also known and worshiped by other pre-Columbian civilizations.

It is possible that different civilizations gave different interpretations and powers to this deity. In most cases, it has been interpreted to be related to rain and water. It is also true that some pre-Columbian peoples linked it to the wind and the planet Venus.

Much of the knowledge about the legend related to this god has been lost. Even so, it is known that some of the pre-Columbian myths knew this god as the creator of the universe.

The image of a personified feathered serpent in which this god could fly in the sky with his feathers as well as move on earth in the form of a serpent.

The fact that the worship of this god is shared among all social classes and different peoples has facilitated exchanges and trust between different cultures.

Mayan Number Symbols

The Mayan number system was a base 20 number system. This means that there is a different symbol for the numbers 0 through 19.

To write numbers greater than 19, it was necessary to write the corresponding symbols vertically. The symbol at the bottom end directly represents the corresponding number as indicated above.

The second level symbol must be multiplied by 20. The third level number must be multiplied by 20² (= 400). Applying this scheme successively, any number can be written.

Jaguar

In Mayan mythology, the jaguar was a god of the underworld related to the night. It was believed that the sun turned into a jaguar at night. The jaguar was known for his strength and courage.

Therefore, it was a symbol used by the warriors of the Mayan civilization. Given the ferocity of the jaguar, it was also often linked to the authority of the ruling classes. Along with Kukulkan, the jaguar was one of the most important religious symbols of the Mayan culture.

Sol

The sun was of crucial importance in the Mayan culture. The Mayans have developed very advanced knowledge about solar cycles.

This allowed them to identify the solstices and equinoxes, as well as define their calendars. This knowledge has influenced many aspects of the Mayan culture, including their architecture.

The Mayans used different symbols to represent the Sun, as well as the deities related to it. The different ways of representing the Sun have been interpreted as a symbol of life and knowledge.

Symbol of Hunab-Ku

One of the shields prepared and praised by the Maya in the final decades is the Hunab-Ku symbol. This symbol was described in the book The Mayan Factor by José Argüelles.

This symbol, based in part on the Ying Yang symbol, has now been inscribed by some new age Mayan currents.

Decoding

Interpreting the lyrics was a long and tedious procedure. Historians in the XNUMXth and early XNUMXth centuries were aware of evaluating Mayan figures and text routes related to astronomy and the Mayan calendar, but understanding the rest was beyond the reach of scholars.

The Soviet linguist and ethnologist Yuri Knorozov played a leading role in the decipherment of the Mayan script. In 1952, Knorozov published an article entitled "Древняя письменность Центральной Америки" Central America".

Where he argued that, The so-called "Landa alphabet" contained in Bishop Diego de Landa's manuscript "Relationship of Yucatan Things" was composed of syllables instead of alphabetic symbols.

He later improved his deciphering technique in his 1963 monograph "The Writing of the Mayan Indians" and edited translations of Mayan manuscripts in his 1975 Mayan Hieroglyphic Manuscripts ("Mayan Hieroglyphic Manuscripts").

In the 1960s, the researcher Tatiana Proskouriakoff managed to decipher, through the epigraphic, mathematical and iconographic study of the Piedras Negras stelae, in the state of Chiapas.

The first dynastic records of the Mayan rulers, who ended up forever demolishing Thompson's Theory, until now generally accepted, who affirmed that in the Mayan glyphs there was no history, but only mathematical calculations, thus opening new avenues for decipherment in the right direction .

Since the start of the 1980s most hitherto unknown symbols have been shown to form a syllabary, and since then progress in the interpretation of Maya writing has accelerated.

Apparently, the Maya would have inherited some elements, and perhaps the entire base, of their ancient writing system from the Olmec, which would have been considerably modified and later expanded by the Maya in preclassic times.

Texts from this stage are fewer in number and less understandable to archaeologists than later texts.

At some point, the Isthmian or Epi-Olmec script was once considered a possible direct ancestor of the Mayan script, and it is now considered several centuries later, and could be a descendant instead.

Other related cultures from this region of Central America around the same period are also said to be inheritors of Mayan symbols and Olmec writing and have developed parallel systems that share key attributes (such as the vigesimal numeral system, represented by dots and bars). .

However, it is generally believed that the Mayans generated the only complete writing system in Mesoamerica, and would later be the only civilization in their region to have a complete writing system.

Able to write anything. either in the spoken language, unlike the systems used, for example, by the Mexican culture, which used a system based on the rebus principle.

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