Vestiges of Early Maya Time Concepts in a Contemporary Maya (Cubulco Achi) Community: Implications for Epigraphy

Bishop Diego de Landa (Tozzer, 1941: 27, 63-4) showed that the knowledge of highly sophisticated methods for conceptualizing and recording the passage of time was the peculiar possession of specialists in the Maya society. Nash (1957: 149) correctly predicted the demise of such specialists in the geographic area occupied by Cubulco, Baja Verapaz, "south of a line which runs through Nebaj, San Cristobal, and Santa Cruz in Guatemala" and suggested that their demise may be traced to the failure to regularly elect them, incorporating them into the existent political structure. The longtime absence of such elected calendar specialists in Cubulco leads one to expect that these descendants of the ancient Maya have been divested of the means for precisely calculating time. Surprisingly, such is not the case. The Cubulco Achi nonspecialist possesses a well developed system for pinpointing an event in time several years backward or forward without recourse to the numeration, day names and month names of either the Gregorian calendar or the 260-day or 365-day cycles utilized by their ancestors. While the twenty day names of the 260-day divinatory calendar are known to a few native priests (ah 'ih "of days/sun"), their use is mainly restricted to divinations.