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Eleventh of the twenty. Yucatec Chuwen; K'iche' B'atz'. The Classic sign is a monkey head with a distinctive marking on the cheek and a characteristically drawn ear. The Yucatec name carries the sense of artisan or craftsman; the K'iche' name means monkey, and also thread — the spun cord as it comes off the spindle. The site's tooltip gives it as the monkey artisan, thread of time. Direction west, colour black.
This is the day with the clearest single line running from a Classic glyph through a colonial book to a ceremony held this year.
Religion and daykeeping
Wajxaqib' B'atz' — 8 B'atz', which is 8 Chuwen in the Yucatec naming — is the daykeepers' new year. In Momostenango and other K'iche' towns it is the day on which new ajq'ijab' complete their initiation, having been trained through the preceding cycle, and on which established daykeepers renew their commitments. It comes round every 260 days, so it moves freely through the Gregorian year and never lands in the same season twice running. It is the most publicly visible day in the whole count, and the one that most plainly demonstrates that this is a functioning religious calendar rather than a historical curiosity.
In living highland practice more broadly, B'atz' is the thread — time itself understood as something spun and wound, and by extension weaving, the crafts, and the unrolling of a life. Ethnographic accounts and Guatemalan Maya organisations describe it as a day for beginnings that will take a long time to finish, for artistry, and for the continuity of a lineage. An ajq'ij born on B'atz' is spoken of as a maker, and as someone whose calling arrives early. What is done at the initiations, and where, is taught inside the lineage; it is described here, not instructed.
The Popol Vuh names this day twice over in a single pair of characters. Jun B'atz' and Jun Chowen — One Monkey and One Artisan — are the Hero Twins' elder half-brothers: flautists, singers, writers, carvers and jewellers, who bully the twins and are tricked into climbing a tree, whereupon they become monkeys. They remain the patrons of the arts, invoked by musicians and scribes. One character carries the K'iche' name of the day, the other the Yucatec name, which is about as tidy a piece of corroboration as this field offers.
The Classic-period counterpart is the monkey scribe, a well-attested figure on painted pottery: a howler or spider monkey holding a brush and a codex, sometimes paired, associated with writing and with the making of books. The Dresden and Madrid codices carry the day as a station among their 260-day almanacs like any other.
The Aztec cognate is Ozomahtli, monkey, whose patron is Xochipilli, the flower prince and lord of song and dance. The Zapotec piyè and the Mixtec codices hold the same position, conventionally glossed Monkey.
Key dates
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| c. 600–500 BCE (contested) | Earliest 260-day count glyphs, Oaxaca — San José Mogote and Monte Albán. Zapotec, not Maya. |
| 36 / 32 BCE | Chiapa de Corzo Stela 2 and Tres Zapotes Stela C, the earliest dated Long Counts. Both partly reconstructed. |
| c. 250–900 CE | Classic period: monkey scribes painted on funerary pottery; day signs in cartouches on the monuments. |
| 11th–12th c. CE (debated) | The surviving Dresden Codex copy, with its 260-day almanacs. |
| c. 1554–1558 | The Popol Vuh is written down in K'iche', naming Jun B'atz' and Jun Chowen as patrons of the arts. |
| 1562 / 1566 | Landa burns the books at Maní, then records the twenty day names in his Relación. |
| 1905–1935 | The Goodman–Martínez–Thompson correlation, constant 584283. Mainstream, not unanimous. |
| 11 Aug 3114 BCE | Long Count zero under GMT 584283 (6 Sep 3114 BCE Julian); the 584285 variant gives 13 August. |
| 21 Dec 2012 | 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in — the anchor this site counts from. |
| 1995 / 1996 | Guatemala's Peace Accords recognise Maya spirituality and access to sacred places. |
In the count
Chuwen returns every twenty days, its coefficient seven higher each time, since twenty leaves seven on division by thirteen: 7, 1, 8, 2, 9, 3, 10, 4, 11, 5, 12, 6, 13. Thirteen appearances, 260 days, and the pairing repeats.
Upcoming in 2026, on the site's GMT anchor: 21 August (3 Chuwen), 10 September (10 Chuwen), 30 September (4 Chuwen).
Wajxaqib' B'atz', 8 Chuwen, fell on 22 June 2026 by the site's arithmetic; the previous one was 5 October 2025 and the next is 9 March 2027. Communities set their own observance around the day, so treat these as the count's dates rather than as a published programme.
Related
- Maya Tzolk'in — the system, the count, and what it is not.
- Ok — the day before.
- Eb' — the day after.
- World Zodiacs · Religion · Calendar