![]() ![]() Although these researchers emphasised its close affinity to later Classic Maya day names, Oaxacan cognates for the Olmec glyphs were found as well.ĭavid Grove (1970a, 46-48 1970b,19-20) also asserted that Painting 3 from Oxtotitlán cave in Guerrero, Mexico may represent the day name cipactli or ‘alligator’ based on its general reptilian appearance and the presence of numbers of rendered as dots. 650 BC), the San Andrés artefacts seem to bear evidence for the day-sign ahau or ‘lord’ (Pohl et al. Consisting of a cylinder seal and a greenstone plaque dated to the Middle Formative period (c. Besides this attempt, a few examples of calendrical inscriptions using the Maya long count system have been documented in the southern Gulf Coast lowlands and Chiapas but occur primarily in association with the Epi-Olmec or Isthmian script of the Late Formative period (Coe 1957, 1976 Pahl 1981 Piña Chan 1993).Įvidence for the 260-day calendar has also been found on the Gulf Coast at the site of San Andrés, located a few kilometers to the northeast of La Venta in Tabasco, Mexico. To address this question, some scholars have attempted to reconstruct the day names used by Formative period peoples by creating an ‘Olmec’ sacred calendar using ideal types for the day signs reconstructed from Olmec, early Classic Maya and early Zapotec (Monte Albán I) monuments found in many different parts of Mesoamerica (for example, Edmonson 1986, 81). Despite its great antiquity and widespread use in Central Mexico, there has been relatively little information on whether the 260-day divinatory calendar was present among the Early-to-Middle Formative period peoples of the region and associated with Olmec-style art.įigure 1: Photograph of Cerro Quiotepec and the Río Atentli Valley (Image Copyright: Arnaud F. By the Late Postclassic period, both Mixtec and Mexica scribes transcribed divinatory day names into various codices in order to forecast the fates of people born on particular dates (for example, Sahagún 1989, 23-24) or to trace the genealogy of various rulers (Caso 1965a, 955-956 Marcus 1992, 234-237). ![]() Similar calendrical dates may have been used in the related Middle Classic period (AD 400 - 900) Ñuiñe script of the Mixteca Baja (Moser 1977, 151-168 Rodríguez Cano 1999, 31).Īt Teotihuacán, a number of glyphs with numbers have been identified as possible day names (Caso 1966, 140-141 Taube 2000, 6). The use of the 20 day names and 13 numerical coefficients associated with the 260-day calendar has been observed in Zapotec inscriptions from Monte Albán I through Monte Albán III (100 BC - AD 800) contexts in the Valley of Oaxaca and may date back to the Middle-to-Late Formative period at San Jose Mogote (500-300 BC) (Marcus 1992, 35-37). The importance of such divinatory calendars among the pre-Hispanic peoples of Central Mexico is well documented. This paper presents comparative iconographic data indicating that a series of six Olmec-style rock paintings from Oxtotitlán cave in Guerrero, Mexico, represented day names found in the sacred 260-day Calendar Round ( tonalpohualli in Nahuatl piye in Zapotec). ![]() An examination of their imagery and their placement within Oxtotitlán cave suggests that these rock paintings were used to denote the calendrical names of local rulers or their divine ancestors. A set of six cave paintings from Oxtotitlán in Guerrero, Mexico are re-interpreted as calendrical glyphs associated with the 260-day sacred Calendar Round. ![]()
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