I think they counted days for religious purposes primarily. I think maize amd cacao can be stored fine between harvests even in hot humid places.
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Right. But not necessarily in stone structures which can be easily defended. Hence it can't be easily controlled by authorities. Just because there were religious associations doesn't mean they couldn't be used for surplus extraction. Religious events often include food after all
jul 11, 2025, 5:08 pm • 0 0 • view
There are hardly any stone defensive structures in mesoamerica.
jul 11, 2025, 5:15 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah I imagine because it's hard to store food in them. That doesn't change the point, if you can't control ppl by controlling goods, maybe you control their labor time directly.
jul 11, 2025, 5:17 pm • 0 0 • view
Or because warfare wasnt about stealing/protecting food?
jul 11, 2025, 5:19 pm • 0 0 • view
Control of food matters just as much internally as it does externally, i.e. a palace storehouse keeping out peasants.
jul 11, 2025, 5:26 pm • 0 0 • view
But peasants have food? They just have to give some if it away every so often. So I don't see that necessarily being the case, keeping it from would be thieves.
jul 11, 2025, 5:32 pm • 0 0 • view
Storage with seals started to be a thing so people couldn't just take food willy nilly, eventually this got used by ruling classes to control access even though it started with egalitarian societies. That paper does cite a story of a Mayan palace giving out food during a famine.
jul 11, 2025, 5:36 pm • 0 0 • view
Point is, if food security /was/ a bigger problem, centralized food storage in secure locations /would/ be the solution. But it appears storage was decentralized in all eras of pre-columbian Mesoamerica.
jul 11, 2025, 5:36 pm • 0 0 • view
And if there is a specific class of priests or other leaders who don't work, or who depend on some infrastructure to maintain their authority, they could use a calendar to claim peoples labor x number of days in the year.
jul 11, 2025, 5:08 pm • 0 0 • view
Making temples and roads definitely required labour facilitated by calendars. But calendarsmight also serve just to organize periods of tribute payment, to make long term storage unnecessary.
jul 11, 2025, 5:18 pm • 1 0 • view