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The inscription on San Jose Mogote Monument 3, the earliest preserved record of time counting in the region, is interpreted as the use of birth date as a name. The signs involved specific one day in a cycle of 260 days, a calendar that some Maya communities continue to use. Later Classic and Postclassic Oaxacan monuments and codices used the 260-cycle positions as personal names as well. Even when the birth date was not used as a name, as on Classic Maya monuments, anniversaries of birth and death were calculated using the 260-day cycle. Many Postclassic Central Mexican people used their birth date in the 260-day calendar as a name. Among the Mexica, this cycle was named tonalpohualli, or “count of the days,” and was used by diviners to assess the prospects of all manner of proposed projects. The tonalpohualli allowed divination of individual life chances based on birth date (Monaghan 1998). The close association of this calendar with human fate has led some scholars to propose an origin in human life cycles as an approximation of nine lunar months, a rough estimate of the length of human pregnancy (Aveni 1980).

Whatever its origin and use, this calendar is composed of a count of days. It combines a sequence of 13 numbers with a series of 20 day names. Beginning on the same date, the shorter cycle of 13 numbers has to restart 7 days before the longer cycle of 20 day names. Because the two series are offset from this point on, the second set of 20 day names begins with the number 8, the third set with the number 2, the fourth with the number 9, and so on, with sets of 20 day names beginning with the numbers 3, 10, 4, 11, 5, 12, 6, 13, and 7. Once 13 sets of the 20 day names are counted, a cycle of 260 days (13 × 20) is complete, and the two counts return to their first positions simultaneously. Every one of the 260 days can be uniquely specified by its combination of number (from the series of 13) and day name (from the set of 20).

While the 260-day cycle is the oldest for which we have direct evidence from inscriptions, it is highly likely that counting segments of the Mesoamerican solar year was equally ancient. The 365-day solar calendar was also based on complete units of 20 days, further subdivided into groups of 5 days. To approximate the solar year, 18 complete cycles of 20 days and one incomplete cycle of 5 days were required. This cycle of 18 “months” of 20 days, with a period of 5 extra transitional days, was the basic civil calendar of the Postclassic Maya states and Tenochtitlan. Community-wide ceremonies were scheduled in it, many with clear associations with an annual agricultural cycle.

By combining the 365-day calendar and the 260-day ritual cycle, Central Mexican peoples in the sixteenth century could record unique dates within periods of 52 years. Because the beginning points of the two cycles did not coincide until 52 solar years had passed, every single day within a 52-year cycle could be uniquely distinguished by naming its position in the 365- and 260-day cycles. This system is employed in Postclassic codices from Central Mexico and Oaxaca (Chapter 10). Because the entire cycle repeated every 52 years, a date in this system was fixed only relative to other days in the same 52-year cycle. By adding a third cycle, recording changes in the visibility of the planet Venus every 584 days, it was possible to create a continuous calendar of 104 years, with each date uniquely specified by its position in the 260-day, 365-day, and 584-day cycle. But the main way that individual cycles of 52 years were placed in order in Postclassic Mexican historical codices was actually through their relationship to the genealogical connections of major historical characters over successive generations. Dates with the same names, based on their position in the 365-day and 260-day cycles, could be distinguished because they were associated with the lives of different public actors.

The earliest records of dates in the 365-day solar year are carved stone monuments dating to the Late Formative period, found in an area extending from the Gulf Coast of Mexico to the Maya highlands of Guatemala. They are always combined with records of the 260-day cycle, evidence for the early use of the fundamental Mesoamerican 52-year calendar. These Late Formative monuments also record a different continuing time count. Most familiar from its extensive use in Classic Maya monuments, scholars call this the Long Count calendar. The basic unit of the Long Count is a single day, summed up in groups of 20 days. Using the zero symbol and place notation, Long Count dates can record any number of days, creating an infinite and continuing count of time.

Normally, the numbers in a Long Count record are arranged in a column, with the lowest place at the bottom and higher places above them. The lowest place records the numbers from 1 to 19 that can be written out using bar and dot alone. The second place in Long Count dates records multiples of 20 days.

The coincidence with the 20-day unit of the 365-day solar calendar perhaps motivated a slight departure from strict place notation and base 20 math in the third position of Long Count dates. Instead of recording multiples of 400 days (20 × 20) that would be expected, the third place records multiples of 360 days (20 × 18). With this innovation, the first three places in the Long Count correspond to units of a day, a cycle of 20 days (the length of a solar year “month” or 260-day cycle day name series), and an approximation of the solar year (360 days). As a result of this innovation, each higher position in a Long Count record approximates multiples of years. The fourth place records 20 cycles of 360 days, or a little less than 20 years; the fifth, 400 cycles of 360 days, or almost 6 years less than four centuries.

The majority of Long Count dates use only these five positions. In base 20 mathematics, the use of these five positions allowed Mesoamerican people to precisely date any event within a span of almost 8,000 years – far more time than their cultural tradition, or any continuous cultural tradition known anywhere in the world, lasted. In a few extraordinary instances, Classic Maya scribes recorded Long Count dates using positions above the fifth place, arriving at calculations of millions of years.

The use of the Long Count established a common historical frame for those Mesoamerican peoples who employed it. The oldest inscribed Long Count dates discovered so far, from the Late Formative period, have the number 7 in their fifth position. Archaeologists conventionally refer to these as Cycle 7 dates. Early Classic Maya inscriptions feature dates in Cycle 8, those of the Late Classic Maya carry dates in Cycle 9, and the beginning of the Maya Terminal Classic period is conventionally equated with the first dated monuments recording Cycle 10. Historical accounts written by Maya scribes using the European alphabet record that Spanish campaigns to dominate them took place in Cycle 11, which allowed for the correlation of European and Maya calendars (Aveni 1980: 204–210).

Whether using the most highly precise linear calendar, or shorter cycles of 52 years, people throughout this region were able to record cultural traditions and historical events in a common historical framework. They expressed a historical consciousness that continues to the present day. This was facilitated by a tradition of literacy, expressed in multiple forms of script, another of the distinctive forms of practice reflected in the trait list definition of Mesoamerica.