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Mesoamerican Calendars
The calendar, calendrical systems devised and used by the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica, primarily a 260-day year, were used in religious observances and social rituals, such as divination. These calendars have been dated to early as ca. 1100 BCE. By 500 BCE at the latest, the essentials were fully defined and functional. 260-day calendars are still used in the Guatemalan highlands, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. The importance of aboriginal calendars in ritual and other aspects of Mesoamerican life was noted by many missionary priests, travelers, and colonial administrators, and later by ethnographers who described and recorded the cultures of contemporary Mesoamerican ethnic groups. Types of calendars Among the various calendar systems in use, two were particularly central and widespread across Mesoamerica. Common to all recorded Mesoamerican cultures, and the most important, was the 260-day calendar, a ritual calendar with no confirmed correlation to astronomic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monte Alban Stela 12 & 13
Monte may refer to: Places Argentina * Argentine Monte, an ecoregion * Monte Desert * Monte Partido, a ''partido'' in Buenos Aires Province Italy * Monte Bregagno * Monte Cassino * Montecorvino (other) * Montefalcione Portugal * Monte (Funchal), a civil parish in the municipality of Funchal * Monte, a civil parish in the municipality of Fafe * Monte, a civil parish in the municipality of Murtosa * Monte, a civil parish in the municipality of Terras de Bouro Elsewhere * Monte, Haute-Corse, a commune in Corsica, France * Monte, Switzerland, a village in the municipality Castel San Pietro, Ticino, Switzerland * Monte, U.S. Virgin Islands, a neighborhood * Monte Lake, British Columbia, Canada Arts, entertainment, and media * Monte (film), ''Monte'' (film), a 2016 drama film by Amir Naderi * Three-card Monte * Monte Bank or Monte, a card game Other uses * Monte (dessert) a milk cream dessert produced by the German dairy company Zott * Monte (mascot), the mascot of the Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Year
A year is a unit of time based on how long it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun. In scientific use, the tropical year (approximately 365 Synodic day, solar days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45 seconds) and the sidereal year (about 20 minutes longer) are more exact. The modern calendar year, as reckoned according to the Gregorian calendar, approximates the tropical year by using a system of leap years. The term 'year' is also used to indicate other periods of roughly similar duration, such as the lunar year (a roughly 354-day cycle of twelve of the Moon's phasessee lunar calendar), as well as periods loosely associated with the calendar or astronomical year, such as the seasonal year, the fiscal year, the academic year, etc. Due to the Earth's axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by changes in weather, the hours of daylight, and, consequently, vegetation and soil fertility. In temperate and subpolar climate, subpolar regions around the planet, four ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zapotec Civilization
The Zapotec civilization ( "The People"; 700 BC–1521 AD) is an Indigenous peoples, indigenous Pre-Columbian era, pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca in Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence shows that their culture originated at least 2,500 years ago. The Zapotec archaeological site at the ancient city of Monte Albán has monumental buildings, Mesoamerican ballgame, ball courts, tombs and grave goods, including finely worked gold jewelry. Monte Albán was one of the first major cities in Mesoamerica. It was the center of a Zapotec state that dominated much of the territory which today is known as the Mexican state of Oaxaca. History Zapotec civilization originated in the Y-shaped Valley of Oaxaca, Central Valleys of Oaxaca in the late 6th century BC. The three valleys were divided among three differently-sized societies, separated by "no-man's-land" in the middle. The Oaxaca, Oaxaca, city of Oaxaca much later developed in that area. Archaeolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zapotec Writing
The Zapotec script is the writing system of the Zapotec culture and represents one of the earliest writing systems in Mesoamerica. Rising in the late Pre-Classic era after the decline of the Olmec civilization, the Zapotecs of present-day Oaxaca built an empire around Monte Albán. One characteristic of Monte Albán is the large number of carved stone monuments one encounters throughout the plaza. There and at other sites, archaeologists have found extended text in a glyphic script. Some signs can be recognized as calendar information but the script as such remains undeciphered (if not undecipherable). Read in columns from top to bottom, its execution is somewhat cruder than that of the later Maya script and this has led epigraphers to believe that the script was also less phonetic than the largely syllabic Maya. According to Urcid (2005), the script was originally a logo-syllabic system and was probably developed for an ancient version of contemporary Zapotecan languages, b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olmecs
The Olmecs () or Olmec were an early known major Mesoamerican civilization, flourishing in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco from roughly 1200 to 400 Before the Common Era, BCE during Mesoamerica's Mesoamerican chronology, formative period. They were initially centered at the site of their development in San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, but moved to La Venta in the 10th century BCE following the decline of San Lorenzo. The Olmecs disappeared mysteriously in the 4th century BCE, leaving the region sparsely populated until the 19th century. Among other "firsts", the Olmec appeared to practice Bloodletting in Mesoamerica, ritual bloodletting and played the Mesoamerican ballgame, hallmarks of nearly all subsequent Mesoamerican societies. The aspect of the Olmecs most familiar now is their artwork, particularly the Olmec colossal heads, colossal heads. The Olmec civilization was first defined through artifacts which collectors purchased on the pre-Columbian art mark ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olmec Hieroglyphs
Olmec hieroglyphs are a set of glyphs developed within the Olmec culture. The Olmecs were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization, flourishing during the formative period (1500–400 BCE) in the tropical lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. The subsequent Epi-Olmec culture (300 BCE to 250 CE), was a successor culture to the Olmec and featured the Isthmian script, which has been characterized as a full-fledged writing system, though with its partial decipherment being disputed. There is no scholarly consensus whether Olmec hieroglyphs represent language, or are a system of proto-writing; the possible existence of writing during Middle and Late Olmec periods has been a matter of long-standing debate. Direct evidence includes the appearance of individual (potential) glyphs as well as the singleton Cascajal Block that bears a potential text. Indirect evidence includes similarities in calendar and writing systems between subsequent Mesoamerica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Americas
The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a single continent, the Americas or America is the 2nd largest continent by area after Asia, and is the 3rd largest continent by population. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with their Lists of islands of the Americas, associated islands, the Americas cover 8% of Earth's total surface area and 28.4% of its land area. The topography is dominated by the American Cordillera, a long chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast. The flatter eastern side of the Americas is dominated by large river basins, such as the Amazon basin, Amazon, St. Lawrence River–Great Lakes, Mississippi River System, Mississippi, and Río de la Plata Basin, La Plata basins. Since the Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meso-
A meso compound or meso isomer is an optically inactive isomer in a set of stereoisomers, at least two of which are optically active. This means that despite containing two or more stereocenters, the molecule is not chiral. A meso compound is superposable on its mirror image (not to be confused with superimposable, as any two objects can be superimposed over one another regardless of whether they are the same). Two objects can be superposed if all aspects of the objects coincide and it does not produce a "(+)" or "(-)" reading when analyzed with a polarimeter. The name is derived from the Greek ''mésos'' meaning “middle”. For example, tartaric acid can exist as any of three stereoisomers depicted below in a Fischer projection. Of the four colored pictures at the top of the diagram, the first two represent the meso compound (the 2'' R'',3'' S'' and 2'' S'',3'' R'' isomers are equivalent), followed by the optically active pair of levotartaric acid (L-(''R,R'')-(+)-tartaric aci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Language
Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic languages, Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the list of languages by first written accounts, longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon. Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Culture Area
In anthropology and geography, a cultural area, cultural region, cultural sphere, or culture area refers to a geography with one relatively homogeneous human activity or complex of activities (culture). Such activities are often associated with an ethnolinguistic group and with the territory it inhabits. Specific cultures often do not limit their geographic coverage to the borders of a nation state, or to smaller subdivisions of a state. History of concept A culture area is a concept in cultural anthropology in which a geographic region and time sequence ( age area) is characterized by shared elements of environment and culture.; Webarchive of http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/15. A precursor to the concept of culture areas originated with museum curators and ethnologists during the late 1800s as means of arranging exhibits, combined with the work of taxonomy. The American anthropologists Clark Wissler and Alfred Kroeber further developed this version of the con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Kirchhoff
Paul Kirchhoff (17 August 1900, Halle, Province of Westphalia – 9 December 1972) was a German-Mexican anthropologist, most noted for his seminal work in defining and elaborating the culture area of Mesoamerica, a term he coined. Early life and academic career Paul Kirchhoff was born in the German locality of Hörste, in the region of Westphalia. He commenced his undergraduate studies in Protestant theology and comparative religion at the University of Berlin, moving later to Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg. In the mid-1920s he undertook further studies at the University of Leipzig in ethnology and psychology, where he first developed his abiding interest in the indigenous cultures of the Americas. completing his studies in 1927. In 1928, he left for the United States. There, as a student of Edward Sapir, he studied the Navajo language until 1930. By 1931 he had returned to Germany to defend his thesis. He was the co-founder of Mexico's National School of Anthropo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vigesimal
A vigesimal ( ) or base-20 (base-score) numeral system is based on 20 (number), twenty (in the same way in which the decimal, decimal numeral system is based on 10 (number), ten). ''wikt:vigesimal#English, Vigesimal'' is derived from the Latin adjective , meaning 'twentieth'. Places In a vigesimal Numerical digit, place system, twenty individual numerals (or digit symbols) are used, ten more than in the decimal system. One modern method of finding the extra needed symbols is to write 10 (number), ten as the letter A, or , where the 20 means radix, base , to write 19 (number), nineteen as , and the numbers between with the corresponding letters of the alphabet. This is similar to the common Computer science, computer-science practice of writing hexadecimal numerals over 9 with the letters "A–F". Another less common method skips over the letter "I", in order to avoid confusion between I20 as 18 (number), eighteen and 1 (number), one, so that the number eighteen is written as J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
