By Reuters via
NBC News
The discovery of a glyph representing a day called Seven Deer, which was discovered on a mural from the 3rd century BC (BC) in the ruins of a pyramid in Guatemala, is considered to be the earliest known use of the Mayan calendar, one of the most recognized achievements of this ancient American culture.
The fragments were found at the archaeological center of San Bartolo, in the jungle of northern Guatemala, which gained fame for the 2001 discovery of a buried chamber with elaborate and colorful murals dating to around 100 BC and depicting ceremonial scenes. and mythological Mayans, as reported on Wednesday by a team of researchers.
The pieces with the glyph of the Seven Deer were unearthed in the Las Pinturas pyramid, where intact murals from a later era were found.
The Mayans used to build temples of modest size that were later enlarged;
this pyramid grew to be about 90 feet tall.
NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale and NASA researcher William Saturno investigate the San Bartolo Mayan archaeological site in Petén, Guatemala, on December 11, 2007.Getty Images.
The Seven Deer glyph, one of the 260 named days in the Mayan calendar, is drawn in this ancient script as the number seven over the outline of a deer's head.
David Stuart, a professor of Mesoamerican writing at the University of Texas and lead author of the research published in the journal Science Advances, described the fragments as "two small pieces of white plaster that would fit in your hand, and that were once attached to a stone wall."
“The wall was intentionally destroyed by the ancient Mayans when they were rebuilding their ceremonial spaces;
over time it became a pyramid.
The two pieces fit together and have a calligraphy painted in black, which opens with the date of Seven Deer.
The rest is hard to read,” Stuart added.
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“Paintings from this phase are highly fragmented, unlike those in the famous later chamber,” said Stuart.
Until now, the first annotation of the Mayan calendar dated back to the 1st century BC
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This calendar, based on observations of the movements of the sun, moon, and planets, was governed by a ritual cycle of 260 days called
tzolk'in
, and was one of several interrelated systems for calculating time, which also included a year. solar system of 365 days, a larger system called the Long Count, and a lunar system.
It was one of the achievements of a culture that also developed a writing system encompassing 800 glyphs
, with the earliest examples also from San Bartolo.
The Mayans built temples, pyramids, palaces, observatories and practiced advanced agriculture without using metal tools or the wheel.
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San Bartolo was a regional center during the Mayan preclassic period, which spanned from 400 BC to 250 AD.
This era laid the foundation for the flourishing of Mayan culture during the subsequent Classic period, known for cities such as Tikal in Guatemala, Palenque in Mexico, and Copan in Honduras.
Some 7,000 mural fragments have been found in San Bartolo, some as small as a fingernail and others as large as 8 by 16 inches, which constitute what study co-author and anthropology professor Heather Hurst of Skidmore College in New York, called "a gigantic puzzle".
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The Seven Deer and other annotations seen on 11 San Bartolo mural fragments examined in the study point to the maturity of artistic and writing conventions in the region at the time, suggesting that the calendar had been in use for many years. .
"Other earlier examples are likely to be found at other sites," Hurst said.
"The scribal tradition represented in these 11 fragments is diverse, expressive, their technology for paint preparation and calligraphic fluency impressive - this was an established tradition of writing," Hurst added.
Some Mayan communities still use the old calendar today.
"This system has lasted for at least 2,200 years, being maintained by the Maya during times of incredible change, stress and tragedy," Stuart concluded.