In Latin America, there were two ways of determining the date in ancient times. The two cycles included the Sacred Almanac and the Astronomical year. The Sacred Almanac was the older of the two and consisted of twenty named days with thirteen numbers.

    To get a more understandable definition think of two gears, one with thirteen numbers and the other with twenty names. The first day of the year in the 260 day cycle is crocodile 1 and the next day is wind 2 and so on as the chart below indicates. Each day had a sacred name which usually had something to do with the gods. These names were extremely universal throughout Latin America, especially in the Inca culture.

    The Astronomical Calendar was similar to our modern calendar. It was produced to properly correlate to the tropical calendar year. This calendar was made up of 18 months with twenty day months and a five day addition to make a 365 day year. Some experts consider the addition of five days nothing more than just a fine tuner to get to the tropical year of 365 days. Since the Maya mathematical system consisted of only twenties, the Sacred and Astronomical years had to be written with twenties.

    The days of the calendars would match once every 52 years, because the sacred and astronomical calendars were not divisible. To have order, (365x260) 18,980 days in the cycle had to occur. This 52 year cycle was called Xiuhmolpilli by the Aztecs. This word meant or was called the " year bundle". This was a time of great anxiety for this is when the present ended. At the end of this cycle the children had to be watched so they would not turn into beasts nor were they allowed to sleep so they wouldn't turn into rats.

    When the Spanish conquistadors conquered the Aztecs they adopted the astronomical calendar as their own with only minor changes.

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