The K'iche' were the dominant highland power before the Spanish arrived, ruling from Q'umarkaj, called Utatlan by the Nahuatl speaking allies of the invaders. Robert Carmack's study reconstructs that kingdom from archaeology, from colonial land titles and from the Popol Vuh's own dynastic sections, and describes a state built by lineages claiming an eastern origin. Pedro de Alvarado burned the town in 1524, and the conquest of the highlands followed.
What survived the conquest most intact was the calendar. The 260 day count, the cholq'ij, has been kept continuously in the western highlands, and the ajq'ijab, the daykeepers, are the specialists who count it, name the days, read questions with tz'ite seeds, and conduct ceremonies at hilltop and cave altars. The office is held by both men and women and is entered through a calling that is diagnosed rather than chosen.
Catholicism arrived with the conquest and was made local through the cofradias, the lay brotherhoods that hold the saints and finance their fiestas. The result is less a compromise than two calendars running in parallel in the same towns. The Guatemalan armed conflict of the later twentieth century fell most heavily on these communities, and the work of the daykeepers has been part of the recovery from it since.