WHAT IS THE EMBLEM GLYPH ?

Symbols standing for royal lineages and their domains in the Maya civilization; a Maya glyph identifying a place or polity. Each of the principal Maya cities had its own hieroglyph, which appears in inscriptions of all kinds. All such emblem glyphs share the same prefix, but the main element varies from one city to another. Many of these glyphs can now be linked to specific sites; others have still to be identified. They were first discovered in 1958.

WHAT IS THE CHACMOOL ?

CHACMOOL: a Mesoamerican life-sized sculpted stone figure representing a reclining human with the head turned to one side, knees drawn up, and hands holding a shallow receptacle flat on the stomach. This was a widespread art form in the Post-Classic period, especially at the Toltec sites of Tula and Chichen Itza and at Aztec and Tarascan sites. It was located at the entranceway to temples and was probably a repository for offerings.

WHAT IS THE CALENDAR STONE ?

CALENDAR STONE: 25-ton, 4 m (13-feet) wide carved monolith commissioned by the Emperor Axayacatl in 1479, which symbolizes the Aztec universe. The populations of central Mexico believed that they were living in the fifth epoch of a series of worlds (or suns) marked by cyclical generation and destruction. The central figure of the stone is this fifth sun, Tonatuih. Surrounding this are four rectangular cartouches containing the dates and symbols for the gods Ehecatl, Texcatlipoca, Tlaloc, and Chilchihuitlicue who represent the four worlds previously destroyed and the dates of the previous holocausts – 4 Tiger, 4 Wind, 4 Rain, and 4 Water. The central panel contains the date 4 Ollin (movement) on which the Aztecs showed that they anticipated that their current world would be destroyed by an earthquake. In a series of increasingly larger concentric bands, symbols for the 20 days of the month, precious materials, and certain stars are represented. The outermost band depicts two massive serpents whose heads meet at the stone’s base. The Calendar Stone is in the Museo Nacional de Antropología (National Museum of Anthropology) in Mexico City.

WHAT IS THE CALENDAR ROUND ?

CALENDAR ROUND: A ritually and historically important calendar used throughout Mesoamerica in which the solar calendar of 365 days ran in parallel with a sacred 260-day ritual calendar of named days. The calendar round is a 52-year cycle, since both calendars begin on the same day only once every 52 years. Coefficients for days and months were expressed by bar-and-dot numerals, a system that is first known in Monte Albán I and that became characteristic of the Classic Maya. The basic structure of the Mayan calendar is common to all calendars of Mesoamerica. To identify a date of the calendar round, the Maya designated the day by its numeral and name, and added the name of the current month, indicating the number of its days that had elapsed by prefixing one of the numerals from 0 through 19. A date written in this way will occur once in every calendar round, at intervals

of 52 years. It is the meshing of the two Maya calendars, the Tzolkin and the Haab.