This Could Be The Earliest Evidence of a 260-Day Maya Calendar Ever Found

The earliest evidence of a Maya sacred calendar can be found in the fragments of an ancient mural.

There is a small fragment of a mural that used to adorn the temple wall, and there is a black dot and solid line on top of the animal's head.

Records of this sacred calendar have been found in Central America before, but they have proved difficult to date with any accuracy.

It is a very rare example of a clear day of the year, which was written between 200 and 300 BCE.

That is more than a thousand years older than other calendar hieroglyphs found elsewhere. Researchers think the calendar was in use long before this one date was written down.

The authors of the study wrote that the evidence now suggests that we can no longer single out one region of Mexico as the point of origin for script or calendrical record keeping.

The situation would point to an even earlier origin of the calendar during the Middle Preclassic.

The 7 Deer date was found among hundreds of other fragments in the foundations of the Las Pinturas pyramid.

This pyramid is home to several layers of Maya history, each stacked on top of one another, stretching back to 800 BCE.

The pyramid is famous for its painted murals depicting Maya mythology.

There are other structures underneath the pyramid. In 2005, excavations below the fifth layer of construction revealed remnants of plaster walls.

The earliest evidence of writing in the Maya region can be found in these scrawls.

The earliest evidence of a calendar is found in the same layer.

The painted murals of San Bartolo should be given cultural heritage status. Some of the painted plaster may have been part of a wall mural.

The 7 Deer date is written in a black line style.

Some indigenous communities still use a 260-day sacred calendar that the Maya followed. The days are named from 1 to 20 in a set order, and they are repeated 13 times a year.

A day 7 Deer is followed by a day 8 Rabbit, a day 9 Water, and a day 10 Dog.

There are two pieces depicting a Maya calendar date. The Proyecto Regional Arqueol is courtesy of Karl Taube.

The head of a deer is clearly shown in the top fragment. There is a bar-and-dot number 7 above this head.

There is a hieroglyph of un described meaning in the bottom fragment. The vertical alignment shows that the date above is acting as a caption.

Sometimes Maya were named after calendar events, like the names April or August in English. Researchers think it is a date.

There is a framed background on the 7 Deer day sign. The drawings are by David Stuart.

The 260-day calendar has long been a key element in the traditional definitions of Mesoamerica as a cultural region, and its persistence in many communities up to the present day stands as a testament of its importance in religious and social life.

Our ability to trace its early use back some 23 centuries is a testament to its historical and cultural significance.

Science Advances published the study.