9/2/2023 0 Comments Maya glyphs interpretation![]() In several cases variants are given to facilitate identification. The forms in figure 16 are from the inscriptions and those in figure 17 from the codices. The glyphs for these twenty days are shown in figures 16 and 17. The day, therefore, as the most obvious period in nature, as well as the most reliable, has been used the world over as the fundamental unit for the measurement of longer stretches of time. Even where a 365-day year had been determined, the fractional loss, amounting to a day every four years, soon brought about a discrepancy between the calendar and the true year. A late spring or an early winter by hastening or retarding the return of a season caused the apparent lengths of succeeding years to vary greatly. The round of the seasons was even more unsatisfactory. The waxing and waning of the moon, with its everchanging shape and occasional obscuration by clouds, as well as its periodic disappearances from the heavens all combined to render that luminary of little account in measuring the passage of time. Indeed, as primitive man saw nature, day was the only division of time upon which he could absolutely rely. Conformity to the operation of this natural law has been practically universal. When it was light, man worked when it was dark, he rested. From the earliest times successive returns of the sun have regulated the whole scheme of human existence. ![]() ![]() Among all peoples and in all ages the most obvious unit for the measurement of time has been the day and the never-failing reappearance of light after each interval of darkness has been the most constant natural phenomenon with which the mind of man has had to deal. ![]()
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