Yucatec Caban, also written Kaban, is glossed as earth, and the K'iche' name for the same day is No'j, thought or knowledge. The two are far apart as words but not as ideas in Maya thought, where the earth is the place from which understanding comes and where the shrines that daykeepers serve are earth shrines.
The central Mexican seventeenth sign is Ollin, movement or earthquake, which agrees with the Yucatec earth reading in substance if not in wording; Ollin is also the sign of the present world age in the Aztec cosmology recorded on the Sun Stone, the age destined to end in earthquakes.
Caban is a Year Bearer in the Classic system, where the four are Ik, Manik, Eb and Kaban, and it remains one under its K'iche' name No'j in the living highland count, whose four bearers are Iq', Kej, E and No'j. It is not a bearer in the Postclassic Yucatec system Diego de Landa recorded, which uses Kan, Muluc, Ix and Kawak. A No'j year is spoken of by daykeepers in terms of deliberation and counsel, and the ceremonies that mark the change of bearer are still kept.
No'j years occupy a particular place in highland Guatemala because the change of bearer is marked by ceremony at the mountain shrines, performed on a fixed day and attended by the wider community rather than by specialists alone. The Mam town of Momostenango is the best known centre of this observance. These are living observances, described here rather than prescribed, and the details of them belong to the communities that keep them.