THE MESOAMERICAN 6,940-DAY CYCLE RECONSIDERED

Abstract

In 1931 John Teeple first proposed that the dates recorded on Stela A at Copán evidenced the Classic Maya knowledge of the Metonic cycle. While his Determinant Theory has long been fully discredited, scholars’ explanations of a 6940-day period have been diverse (e.g. Morley, 1920; Spinden, 1924; Chambers, 1965; Alexander, 1988). The information, however, is not self-evident. At best, the use of the 235-lunar month cycle may only be inferred from a limited corpus of documents, but cannot be confirmed (Bricker and Bricker, 2011). While it may be imprudent to firmly dismiss the hypothesis concerning the Maya awareness of the Metonic cycle, it seems that even if the Maya has some knowledge of it, in practice this knowledge had never been consistently used or disseminated.