To the Maya, the search for meaning in time was central to their whole culture. It was a driving force that could be compared to the influence that technology has had over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Huge amounts of the Maya's resources were focused on keeping the necessary observations, both astronomical and ceremonial. The recording of dates on carved monuments called stelae spread like a cult around the different Mayan centers, with each one vying with the others to come up with the grandest, most elaborate recordings of the exact time.

It is widely believed that auspicious dates were so important that the births of rulers were occasionally changed to fit the best possible cycles. Accession to a throne and even the death of a ruler were determined by the best date. This belief in auspicious timing may even have been the original reason for the offering of human sacrifice, which may have started with the self-sacrifice of kings attempting to fulfill their divine roles by dying on the most auspicious days possible. Mayan beliefs about death were quite different from our own and there is a theory that suggests many engravings of kings and rulers depict them at their dying moments. In these cases, death was seen as a glorious climactic moment when the right kind of exit on the right kind of day would propel them successfully into the afterworld and ensure that the rightful order in this world was maintained.