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There are many ways of thinking about time.
As with most other ancient peoples, the Maya were concerned with all aspects of time. The Maya calendar not only incorporated a count of days, it also detailed astronomical information pertaining to the moon and Venus. Some of their architectural groups were constructed in the shape of time, and many of their ritual deposits served to memorialize time. Their communities were ordered and galvanized by time. While linear aspects of time were incorporated in Maya histories, past, present, and future events and activities were also tied together in cyclical time, providing the opportunity to predict or even influence the future.
Academic interpretations about the significance of time for the ancient Maya have varied over the years. In the early part of the twentieth century, hieroglyphic texts were viewed as only being concerned with marking calendrical time and as being devoid of historical reference. The Maya were believed to have been ruled by calendar priests who were essentially time lords studying the heavens. This interpretation was largely premised on the counts of different temporal intervals that were found on the vast majority of their carved stone monuments, but it also reflected the desires of modern populations to believe that there had once been a utopian past.
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