A glyph depicting a day called the “Seven Deer” inscribed over fragments of a mural dating back to the 3rd century BC and found within the ruins of a pyramid in Guatemala marks the earliest known use of the Mayan calendar, one of the culture’s most famous achievements. of antiquity.
The fragments were found at the San Bartolo archaeological site, in the jungle of northern Guatemala. The site became famous with the 2001 discovery of an underground chamber containing complex, colorful murals dating to around 100 BC depicting Mayan ceremonies and mythological scenes, researchers said Wednesday.
The fragments with the glyph “Seven Deer” were discovered inside the same pyramid at Las Pinturas where the still intact murals from a later period were found. As was the case with this structure, the Mayans often built temples of modest dimensions and then erected successively larger versions on top of earlier versions. The pyramid of Las Pinturas ended up reaching about one hundred meters in height.
The glyph for “Seven Deer”, one of the 260 named days of the Mayan calendar, found on the mural fragments, consisted of the numeral 7 drawn in ancient Mayan script over the outline of a deer’s head.
David Stuart, a professor of Mesoamerican art and writing at the University of Texas and lead author of the research published in the journal Science Advances, described the fragments as “two small, hand-held pieces of white plaster that have in the past been attached to a stone wall. “.
“The wall was intentionally destroyed by the ancient Mayans when they were rebuilding their ceremonial spaces, and it ended up becoming a pyramid. The two pieces fit together and have handwriting painted in black, starting with the date ‘Seven Deer’. The rest is difficult to read. .”
“The paintings from this phase are all heavily fragmented, unlike the more famous posterior chamber,” said Stuart.
Until now the most definitive notation of the Mayan calendar dated to the first century BC.
Supported by observations of the movements of the Sun, Moon and planets, the calendar was based on the ritual cycle of 260 named days. The 260-day calendar, called the Tzolk’in calendar, was one of several interconnected Mayan systems of time reckoning, which also included a 365-day solar year, and a larger system called the “long count” and a lunar system.
The calendar was one of the great achievements of a culture that also developed a writing system made up of 800 glyphs, of which the oldest examples also come from the San Bartolo site. The Mayans built temples, pyramids, palaces and observatories and practiced sophisticated agriculture without using metal tools or the wheel.
San Bartolo was a regional center during the Pre-Classical Mayan period, between 400 BC and 250 AD This era laid the foundations for the flowering of Mayan culture during the subsequent Classical period, known for cities that included Tikal in Guatemala, Palenque in the Mexico, and Copan, in Honduras.
About 7,000 mural fragments — some as small as a fingernail, others measuring up to 20 cm by 40 cm — were found in San Bartolo, corresponding to a “giant jigsaw puzzle”, according to the anthropology professor at Skidmore College in New York. York, Heather Hurst, co-author of the study.
The “Seven Deer” and other notations seen on 11 fragments of the San Bartolo mural examined in the study point to the existence of mature artistic and writing conventions in the region at the time, suggesting that the calendar must have been in use for many years.
“Other examples, possibly even earlier than this one, are likely to be found at other sites,” Hurst said.
“The writing tradition represented in these 11 fragments is diverse, expressive. The ink preparation technology and the calligraphic fluidity of the scribes are impressive. It is a well-established tradition of writing and art,” she added.
Some Mayan communities still use the ancient calendar today.
“This calendar system has lasted for at least 2,200 years, maintained by the Mayans through times of incredible transformation, tension and tragedy,” Stuart commented.
Translation by Clara Allain
