[30] As Bishop Landa wrote not later than 1579, this is Old Style. The corresponding day in the Gregorian Calendar would be July 27.
[31] This is probably to be accounted for by the fact that in the Maya system of chronology, as we shall see later, the 365-day year was not used in recording time. But that so fundamental a period had therefore no special glyph does not necessarily follow, and the writer believes the sign for the haab will yet be discovered.
[32] Later researches of the writer (1914) have convinced him that figure [19], c, is not a sign for Uo, but a very unusual variant of the sign for Zip, found only at Copan, and there only on monuments belonging to the final period.
[33] The writer was able to prove during his last trip to the Maya field that figure [19], f, is not a sign for the month Zotz, as suggested by Mr. Bowditch, but a very unusual form representing Kankin. This identification is supported by a number of examples at Piedras Negras.
[34] The meanings of these words in Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztec, are "year bundle" and "our years will be bound," respectively. These doubtless refer to the fact that at the expiration of this period the Aztec calendar had made one complete round; that is, the years were bound up and commenced anew.
[35] Bulletin 28, p. 330.
[36] All Initial Series now known, with the exception of two, have the date 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu as their common point of departure. The two exceptions, the Initial Series on the east side of Stela C at Quirigua and the one on the tablet in the Temple of the Cross at Palenque, proceed from the date 4 Ahau 8 Zotz—more than 5,000 years in advance of the starting point just named. The writer has no suggestions to offer in explanation of these two dates other than that he believes they refer to some mythological event. For instance, in the belief of the Maya the gods may have been born on the day 4 Ahau 8 Zotz, and 5,000 years later approximately on 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu the world, including mankind, may have been created.
[37] Some writers have called the date 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, the normal date, probably because it is the standard date from which practically all Maya calculations proceed. The writer has not followed this practice, however.
[38] That is, dates which signified present time when they were recorded.
[39] This statement does not take account of the Tuxtla Statuette and the Holactun Initial Series, which extend the range of the dated monuments to ten centuries.