Contents
Seventeenth of the twenty. Yucatec Kab'an; K'iche' No'j. The Classic main sign is a curl or scroll — the kab element, which outside the day cartouche marks earth, and which is also described as a lock of hair. The word kab is earth and land; the day also carries earthquake, the earth in motion. The site's tooltip gives it as earth, thought, and quake. Direction east, colour red.
That triple gloss is not vagueness, it is the actual situation. The Yucatec name says earth. The K'iche' name No'j says thought and knowledge. The Aztec cognate Ollin, patron Xolotl, says movement, and is the sign that names the present world age in the central Mexican account, the Fifth Sun, which is to end in earthquake. Three languages, one position in the count, three meanings that only partly overlap. Which is oldest cannot be recovered from the evidence.
Religion and daykeeping
In living highland practice, No'j is the mind. Ethnographic accounts and Guatemalan Maya organisations describe it as the day of knowledge, memory, good counsel and the well-made decision — for students and for teachers, for anyone who has to think a problem through, and for asking that a mind be clear or a plan be sound. It is a favourable day and a busy one for daykeepers, because so many questions brought to an ajq'ij are decisions. Someone born on No'j is spoken of as intelligent and deliberate, prone to overthinking and to trusting reasoning further than it will bear. Petitions of this kind are made at hearth and lineage altars; the specifics are taught inside the apprenticeship rather than published, and communities differ.
Kab'an is one of the four year bearers, the Mam, in the Guatemalan highlands today, with Ik', Manik' and Eb'. The four bearers must stand five apart in the list, because 365 leaves five on division by twenty; Ik' at 2, Manik' at 7, Eb' at 12 and Kab'an at 17 satisfy that exactly. Landa's Yucatec set was K'an, Muluk, Ix, Kawak, and a third set of Ak'b'al, Lamat, B'en, Etz'nab' is attested as well. Which set applies depends on place and period.
In the Classic record, kab marks the earth in a great many contexts — in place names, in the kab'ch'e'en couplet for a settlement's land and cave, in the earth-monster imagery on which thrones and buildings are made to rest. The Dresden Codex almanacs distribute the twenty days across gods and auguries; the Madrid Codex, dominated by working almanacs, applies the same structure to farming and hunting. The colonial Books of Chilam Balam carry day lists with brief auguries attached.
Classic epigraphy, colonial ethnohistory and contemporary daykeeping are three separate bodies of evidence. Where they agree that is worth something; assuming agreement in advance is how most bad Maya calendar writing goes wrong.
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: the kab earth sign throughout the inscriptions; day signs in cartouches. |
| 11th–12th c. CE (debated) | The surviving Dresden Codex copy, with its 260-day almanacs. |
| 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
Kab'an returns every twenty days, its coefficient seven higher at each return — twenty modulo thirteen is seven — so the numbers run 7, 1, 8, 2, 9, 3, 10, 4, 11, 5, 12, 6, 13 and then begin again. Thirteen appearances, 260 days.
Upcoming in 2026, on the site's GMT anchor: 27 August (9 Kab'an), 16 September (3 Kab'an), 6 October (10 Kab'an).
Related
- Maya Tzolk'in — the system, the count, and what it is not.
- K'ib' — the day before.
- Etz'nab' — the day after.
- World Zodiacs · Religion · Calendar