The Mayan Calendar The last day of the Mayan calendar corresponds with the December Solstice , which has played a significant role in many cultures all over the world. Not a Maya Invention The Maya didn't invent the calendar, it was used by most cultures in pre-Columbian Central America – including the Maya – from around 2000 BCE to the 16th century. The Mayan civilization developed the calendar further and it's still in use in some Maya communities today. Wheels Working Together The Mayan Calendar consists of three separate corresponding calendars, the Long Count, the Tzolkin (divine calendar) and the Haab (civil calendar). Time is cyclical in the calendars and a set number of days must occur before a new cycle can begin. The three calendars are used simultaneously. The Tzolkin and the Haab identify and name the days, but not the years. The Long Count date comes first, then the Tzolkin date and last the Haab date.

A typical Mayan date would read: 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Kumku, where 13.0.0.0.0 is the Long Count date, 4 Ahau is the Tzolkin date and 8 Kumku is the Haab date. The Haab The Haab is a 365 day solar calendar which is divided into 18 months of 20 days each and one month which is only 5 days long (Uayeb). The calendar has an outer ring of Mayan glyphs (pictures) which represent each of the 19 months. Each day is represented by a number in the month followed by the name of the month. Each glyph represents a personality associated with the month. The Haab is somewhat inaccurate as it is exactly 365 days long. An actual tropical or solar year is 365.2422 days long. In today’s Gregorian calendar we adjust for this discrepancy by making almost every fourth year a leap year by adding an extra day – a leap day – on the 29th of February .

The Tzolkin The divine calendar is also known as the Sacred Round or the Tzolkin which means “the distribution of the days”. It is a 260-day calendar, with 20 periods of 13 days used to determine the time of religious and ceremonial events. Each day is numbered from one to thirteen, and then repeated. The day is also given a name (glyph) from a sequence of 20 day names. The calendar repeats itself after each cycle. The Long Count The Long Count is an astronomical calendar which was used to track longer periods of time, what the Maya called the “universal cycle”. Each such cycle is calculated to be 2,880,000 days (about 7885 solar years). The Mayans believed that the universe is destroyed and then recreated at the start of each universal cycle. This belief still inspires a myriad of prophesies about the end of the world. The “creation date” for the current cycle we are in today, is 4 Ahaw, 8 Kumku.

According to the most common conversion, this date is equivalent to August 11, 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar or September 6 in the Julian calendar . How to Set the Date A date in the Maya calendar is specified by its position in both the Tzolkin and the Haab calendars which aligns the Sacred Round with the Vague Year creating the joint cycle called the Calendar Round, represented by two wheels rotating in different directions. The Calendar round cycle takes approximately 52 years to complete. The smallest wheel consists of 260 teeth with each one having the name of the days of the Tzolkin. The larger wheel consists of 365 teeth and has the name of each of the positions of the Haab year. As both wheels rotate, the name of the Tzolkin day corresponds to each Haab position. The date is identified by counting the number of days from the “creation date”. A typical long count date has the following format: Baktun.Katun.Tun.Uinal.Kin. Kin = 1 Day. Uinal = 20 kin = 20 days. Tun = 18 uinal = 360 days.

Katun = 20 tun = 360 uinal = 7,200 days. Baktun = 20 katun = 400 tun = 7,200 uinal = 144,000 days. The kin, tun and katun are numbered from zero to 19; the uinal are numbered from zero to 17; and the baktun are numbered from one to 13. The Long Count has a cycle of 13 baktuns, which will be completed 1.872.000 days (13 baktuns) after 0.0.0.0.0. This period equals 5125.36 years and is referred to as the “Great Cycle” of the Long Count. End of the World? Will the world will end on 21 December 2012, at 11:11 UTC? The Mayan calendar completes its current “Great Cycle” of the Long Count on the 13th baktun, on 13.0.0.0.0.

Using the most common conversion to our modern calendar (the Gregorian calendar ) the end of the “Great Cycle” corresponds to 11:11 Universal Time (UTC), December 21, 2012, hence the myriad of doomsday prophecies surrounding this date. Mayan Culture Today The Maya kept historical records such as civil events and their calendric and astronomical knowledge. They maintain a distinctive set of traditions and beliefs due to the combination of pre-Columbian and post-Conquest ideas and cultures. The Maya and their descendants still form sizable populations that include regions encompassing present day Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Mexico.

Mayans Protest 'Twisting Of Truth' Over 2012 Doomsday Predictions | The Huffington Post Mayans Protest 'Twisting Of Truth' Over 2012 Doomsday Predictions 10/31/2012 03:52 pm ET | Updated Oct 21, 2015 3.6k Jaweed Kaleem National Race and Justice Correspondent, Los Angeles Times Getty Images As the so-called "Mayan doomsday" approaches, the Mayans of Guatemala are speaking out against what some are calling a government- and tour business-led effort to profit off misinterpretations of their traditions. "We are speaking out against deceit, lies and twisting of the truth, and turning us into folklore-for-profit. They are not telling the truth about time cycles," said Felipe Gomez, who leads a Maya alliance called Oxlaljuj Ajpop, in an interview this week with Agence France-Presse .

Gomez was referencing the growth in businesses offering Central American "doomsday tour" packages, as well as events such as doomsday-related one being planned by the Guatemalan Culture Ministry that will attract an estimated 90,000 people to Guatemala City in December. Doomsday and catastrophic predictions related to the Mayan calendar, which hits a symbolic turning point on Dec. 21, 2012, aren't new. They already permeate pop culture through films, songs and hundreds of books. But as the new year approaches, interest has spiked . A Reuters survey in May found that one in 10 people believe that the Mayan calendar could signify the end of the world in 2012, and 15 percent of people believe the world will end in their lifetime. Web sites and message boards promoting the "Mayan doomsday" date have proliferated, and at least one company is selling $5,300 tickets for a 28-day " La Ruta Maya " bike tour that will begin in Costa Rica and end on Dec. 21 in Belize. Gomez said the Dec.

21 "doomsday" is actually the beginning of a new time cycle on the Mayan calendar and "means there will be big changes on the personal, family and community level, so that there is harmony and balance between mankind and nature," according to the AFP . Gomez's told the AFP that his group is organizing what it sees as more respectful and sacred events to mark the turn of the new Mayan calendar in five cities. He suggested that the government instead support these gatherings, the AFP reported. While there are hundreds of theories behind various 2012 end-times predictions, most are tied to the turn of the Mayan Long Count calendar. The calendar largely went out of use more than a millennium ago -- the Mayan people flourished between A.D. 250 and 950 -- and is not used by most contemporary Mayan people. The calendar is based on a set of calculations that counted the number of years since a mythical creation date of either Aug. 11 or 13, in the year 3114 B.C. Interpretations of the exact date vary. It is written as 13.0.0.0.0 on the Long Count calendar. Nov.

13, 2720 B.C., is written as 1.0.0.0.0, while Feb. 16, 2325 B.C., is written as 2.0.0.0.0. Dec. 21 or 23, 2012 -- depending on when one begins the count -- is written once again as 13.0.0.0.0. "The Maya never said anything about the end of the world or anything about a great change in the universe on that date," David Stuart, a professor of Mesoamerican art and writing at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Huffington Post in December 2011 . "The calendar not only continues after that date," he said. "It goes 70 octillion years into the future." The current doomsday predictions are "all mostly coming out of New Age interpretations and mysticism about Mayan calendrics, which are not based on archeology, anthropology or scholarship," said Stuart, author of The Order of Days: The Maya World and the Truth About 2012 . Click through below for a slideshow of doomsday predictions.

1 Maya - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com Google Locating the Maya The Maya civilization was one of the most dominant indigenous societies of Mesoamerica (a term used to describe Mexico and Central America before the 16th century Spanish conquest). Unlike other scattered indigenous populations of Mesoamerica, the Maya were centered in one geographical block covering all of the Yucatan Peninsula and modern-day Guatemala; Belize and parts of the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas ; and the western part of Honduras and El Salvador. This concentration showed that the Maya remained relatively secure from invasion by other Mesoamerican peoples. Did You Know? Among the earliest Maya a single language existed, but by the Preclassic Period a great linguistic diversity developed among the various Maya peoples. In modern-day Mexico and Central America, around 5 million people speak some 70 Maya languages; most of them are bilingual in Spanish. Within that expanse, the Maya lived in three separate sub-areas with distinct environmental and cultural differences: the northern Maya lowlands on the Yucatan Peninsula; the southern lowlands in the Peten district of northern Guatemala and adjacent portions of Mexico, Belize and western Honduras; and the southern Maya highlands, in the mountainous region of southern Guatemala.

Most famously, the Maya of the southern lowland region reached their peak during the Classic Period of Maya civilization (A.D. 250 to 900), and built the great stone cities and monuments that have fascinated explorers and scholars of the region. Early Maya, 1800 B.C. to A.D. 250 The earliest Maya settlements date to around 1800 B.C., or the beginning of what is called the Preclassic or Formative Period. The earliest Maya were agricultural, growing crops such as corn (maize), beans, squash and cassava (manioc). During the Middle Preclassic Period, which lasted until about 300 B.C., Maya farmers began to expand their presence both in the highland and lowland regions. The Middle Preclassic Period also saw the rise of the first major Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmecs. Like other Mesamerican peoples, such as the Zapotec, Totonac, Teotihuacán and Aztec, the Maya derived a number of religious and cultural traits–as well as their number system and their famous calendar–from the Olmec.

In addition to agriculture, the Preclassic Maya also displayed more advanced cultural traits like pyramid-building, city construction and the inscribing of stone monuments. The Late Preclassic city of Mirador, in the northern Peten, was one of the greatest cities ever built in the pre-Columbian Americas. Its size dwarfed the Classic Maya capital of Tikal, and its existence proves that the Maya flourished centuries before the Classic Period. Cities of Stone: The Classic Maya, A.D. 250-900 The Classic Period, which began around A.D. 250, was the golden age of the Maya Empire. Classic Maya civilization grew to some 40 cities, including Tikal, Uaxactún, Copán, Bonampak, Dos Pilas, Calakmul, Palenque and Río Bec; each city held a population of between 5,000 and 50,000 people. At its peak, the Maya population may have reached 2,000,000. Excavations of Maya sites have unearthed plazas, palaces, temples and pyramids, as well as courts for playing the ball games that were ritually and politically significant to Maya culture.

Maya cities were surrounded and supported by a large population of farmers. Though the Maya practiced a primitive type of “slash-and-burn” agriculture, they also displayed evidence of more advanced farming methods, such as irrigation and terracing. The Maya were deeply religious, and worshiped various gods related to nature, including the gods of the sun, the moon, rain and corn. At the top of Maya society were the kings, or “kuhul ajaw” (holy lords), who claimed to be related to gods and followed a hereditary succession. They were thought to serve as mediators between the gods and people on earth, and performed the elaborate religious ceremonies and rituals so important to the Maya culture. The Classic Maya built many of their temples and palaces in a stepped pyramid shape, decorating them with elaborate reliefs and inscriptions. These structures have earned the Maya their reputation as the great artists of Mesoamerica. Guided by their religious ritual, the Maya also made significant advances in mathematics and astronomy, including the use of the zero and the development of a complex calendar system based on 365 days.

Though early researchers concluded that the Maya were a peaceful society of priests and scribes, later evidence–including a thorough examination of the artwork and inscriptions on their temple walls–showed the less peaceful side of Maya culture, including the war between rival Mayan city-states and the importance of torture and human sacrifice to their religious ritual. Serious exploration of Classic Maya sites began in the 1830s. By the early to mid-20th century, a small portion of their system of hieroglyph writing had been deciphered, and more about their history and culture became known. Most of what historians know about the Maya comes from what remains of their architecture and art, including stone carvings and inscriptions on their buildings and monuments. The Maya also made paper from tree bark and wrote in books made from this paper, known as codices; four of these codices are known to have survived. Life in the Rainforest One of the many intriguing things about the Maya was their ability to build a great civilization in a tropical rainforest climate. Traditionally, ancient peoples had flourished in drier climates, where the centralized management of water resources (through irrigation and other techniques) formed the basis of society.

(This was the case for the Teotihuacan of highland Mexico, contemporaries of the Classic Maya.) In the southern Maya lowlands, however, there were few navigable rivers for trade and transport, as well as no obvious need for an irrigation system. By the late 20th century, researchers had concluded that the climate of the lowlands was in fact quite environmentally diverse. Though foreign invaders were disappointed by the region’s relative lack of silver and gold, the Maya took advantage of the area’s many natural resources, including limestone (for construction), the volcanic rock obsidian (for tools and weapons) and salt. The environment also held other treasures for the Maya, including jade, quetzal feathers (used to decorate the elaborate costumes of Maya nobility) and marine shells, which were used as trumpets in ceremonies and warfare. Mysterious Decline of the Maya From the late eighth through the end of the ninth century, something unknown happened to shake the Maya civilization to its foundations. One by one, the Classic cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned, and by A.D. 900, Maya civilization in that region had collapsed. The reason for this mysterious decline is unknown, though scholars have developed several competing theories.

Some believe that by the ninth century the Maya had exhausted the environment around them to the point that it could no longer sustain a very large population. Other Maya scholars argue that constant warfare among competing city-states led the complicated military, family (by marriage) and trade alliances between them to break down, along with the traditional system of dynastic power. As the stature of the holy lords diminished, their complex traditions of rituals and ceremonies dissolved into chaos. Finally, some catastrophic environmental change–like an extremely long, intense period of drought–may have wiped out the Classic Maya civilization. Drought would have hit cities like Tikal–where rainwater was necessary for drinking as well as for crop irrigation–especially hard. All three of these factors–overpopulation and overuse of the land, endemic warfare and drought–may have played a part in the downfall of the Maya in the southern lowlands. In the highlands of the Yucatan, a few Maya cities–such as Chichén Itzá, Uxmal and Mayapán–continued to flourish in the Post-Classic Period (A.D. 900-1500).

By the time the Spanish invaders arrived, however, most Maya were living in agricultural villages, their great cities buried under a layer of rainforest green. Tags The Mayan Calendar | Calendars (1 baktun = 20 katun = 144,000 days = approx. 394 years) The kin, tun, and katun are numbered from 0 to 19. The uinal are numbered from 0 to 17. The baktun are numbered from 1 to 13. Although they are not part of the Long Count, the Mayas had names for larger time spans. The following names are sometimes quoted, although they are not ancient Maya terms: 1 pictun = 20 baktun = 2,880,000 days = approx. 7885 years 1 calabtun = 20 pictun = 57,600,000 days = approx. 158,000 years 1 kinchiltun = 20 calabtun = 1,152,000,000 days = approx.

3 million years 1 alautun = 20 kinchiltun = 23,040,000,000 days = approx. 63 million years The alautun is probably the longest named period in any calendar. When did the Long Count Start? Logically, the first date in the Long Count should be 0.0.0.0.0, but as the baktun (the first component) are numbered from 1 to 13 rather than 0 to 12, this first date is actually written 13.0.0.0.0. The authorities disagree on what 13.0.0.0.0 corresponds to in our calendar.

I have come across three possible equivalences: 13.0.0.0.0 = 8 Sep 3114 BC (Julian) = 13 Aug 3114 BC (Gregorian) 13.0.0.0.0 = 6 Sep 3114 BC (Julian) = 11 Aug 3114 BC (Gregorian) 13.0.0.0.0 = 11 Nov 3374 BC (Julian) = 15 Oct 3374 BC (Gregorian) Assuming one of the first two equivalences, the Long Count will again reach 13.0.0.0.0 on 21 or 23 December AD 2012 - a not too distant future. The date 13.0.0.0.0 may have been the Mayas’ idea of the date of the creation of the world. What is the Tzolkin? The Tzolkin date is a combination of two "week" lengths.

While our calendar uses a single week of seven days, the Mayan calendar used two different lengths of week: a numbered week of 13 days, in which the days were numbered from 1 to 13 a named week of 20 days, in which the names of the days were: 0. Ahau 18. Etznab 19. Caunac The diagram at left shows the day symbols, in the same order as the table above. As the named week is 20 days and the smallest Long Count digit is 20 days, there is synchrony between the two; if, for example, the last digit of today’s Long Count is 0, today must be Ahau; if it is 6, it must be Cimi. Since the numbered and the named week were both "weeks," each of their name/number change daily; therefore, the day after 3 Cimi is not 4 Cimi, but 4 Manik, and the day after that, 5 Lamat. The next time Cimi rolls around, 20 days later, it will be 10 Cimi instead of 3 Cimi.

The next 3 Cimi will not occur until 260 (or 13 x 20) days have passed. This 260-day cycle also had good-luck or bad-luck associations connected with each day, and for this reason, it became known as the "divinatory year." The "years" of the Tzolkin calendar are not counted. When did the Tzolkin Start? Long Count 13.0.0.0.0 corresponds to 4 Ahau. The authorities agree on this. What is the Haab? The Haab was the civil calendar of the Mayas. It consisted of 18 "months" of 20 days each, followed by 5 extra days, known as Uayeb. This gives a year length of 365 days. The names of the month were: 1. Pop 12. Ceh 18. Cumku In contrast to the Tzolkin dates, the Haab month names changed every 20 days instead of daily; so the day after 4 Zotz would be 5 Zotz, followed by 6 Zotz ...

up to 19 Zotz, which is followed by 0 Tzec. The days of the month were numbered from 0 to 19. This use of a 0th day of the month in a civil calendar is unique to the Maya system; it is believed that the Mayas discovered the number zero, and the uses to which it could be put, centuries before it was discovered in Europe or Asia. The Uayeb days acquired a very derogatory reputation for bad luck; known as "days without names" or "days without souls," and were observed as days of prayer and mourning. Fires were extinguished and the population refrained from eating hot food. Anyone born on those days was "doomed to a miserable life." The years of the Haab calendar are not counted. The length of the Tzolkin year was 260 days and the length of the Haab year was 365 days. The smallest number that can be divided evenly by 260 and 365 is 18,980, or 365×52; this was known as the Calendar Round.

If a day is, for example, "4 Ahau 8 Cumku," the next day falling on "4 Ahau 8 Cumku" would be 18,980 days or about 52 years later. Among the Aztec, the end of a Calendar Round was a time of public panic as it was thought the world might be coming to an end. When the Pleaides crossed the horizon on 4 Ahau 8 Cumku, they knew the world had been granted another 52-year extension. When did the Haab Start? Long Count 13.0.0.0.0 corresponds to 8 Cumku. The authorities agree on this. Did the Mayas Think a Year Was 365 Days?

Although there were only 365 days in the Haab year, the Mayas were aware that a year is slightly longer than 365 days, and in fact, many of the month-names are associated with the seasons; Yaxkin, for example, means "new or strong sun" and, at the beginning of the Long Count, 1 Yaxkin was the day after the winter solstice, when the sun starts to shine for a longer period of time and higher in the sky. When the Long Count was put into motion, it was started at 7.13.0.0.0, and 0 Yaxkin corresponded with Midwinter Day, as it did at 13.0.0.0.0 back in 3114 B.C.E. The available evidence indicates that the Mayas estimated that a 365-day year precessed through all the seasons twice in 7.13.0.0.0 or 1,101,600 days.

We can therefore derive a value for the Mayan estimate of the year by dividing 1,101,600 by 365, subtracting 2, and taking that number and dividing 1,101,600 by the result, which gives us an answer of 365.242036 days, which is slightly more accurate than the 365.2425 days of the Gregorian calendar. (This apparent accuracy could, however, be a simple coincidence. The Mayas estimated that a 365-day year precessed through all the seasons twice in 7.13.0.0.0 days. These numbers are only accurate to 2-3 digits. Suppose the 7.13.0.0.0 days had corresponded to 2.001 cycles rather than 2 cycles of the 365-day year, would the Mayas have noticed?) In ancient times, the Mayans had a tradition of a 360-day year. But by the 4th century B.C.E. they took a different approach than either Europeans or Asians. They maintained three different calendars at the same time.

In one of them, they divided a 365-day year into eighteen 20-day months followed by a five-day period that was part of no month. The five-day period was considered to be unlucky. Oldest Known Mayan Astronomical Calendar Stuns Scientists - TIME Follow @TIME Here's what's not going to happen this year: the earth won't end on Dec. 12; it won't be swallowed by a black hole, consumed by the sun or get taken out by a collision with the imaginary planet Nibiru. Here's what will happen: as of today, more people than ever will believe that those calamities will occur on precisely the day they're predicted to. The reason: a new discovery  just reported in the journal Science  of the earliest known Mayan astronomical calendar, featuring elaborate and detailed work by one of the most impressive civilizations that ever lived. It was earlier interpretations of other Mayan calendars that gave rise to the Internet-fueled doomsday scenarios of the past few years  mostly because one calendar cycle the Mayans computed ends Dec. 12 (though no one paid much attention to the fact that another one was supposed to begin immediately after that).

If people can stay focused on the science this time though, they'll find a lot to be impressed by in the new findings. (MORE: Not So Apocalypto: What the Mayan Calendar Tells Us About Latin America in 2012) The site described in the Science paper seems modest at first: a small painted room unearthed in 2011 in the Mayan ruins in Xultun, Guatemala. The overall Xultun site was first described by archaeologists in 1915 and has been explored  and, sadly, plundered  intermittently ever since. But the 2011 find was something new. As described in the paper by a team led by archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, the room was built in the early 9th century and appears to have been originally used to depict historical figures and events in Mayan history. The west, north and east walls of the room, as well as the ceiling, were covered with murals, and some of the text associated with the paintings pegs the events as having occurred in the year 814. But the room did not remain a solemn and commemorative place for long.

Soon it was repurposed for much more prosaic uses, with the east and west walls getting plastered over and pressed into service as a kind of 9th century blackboard, onto which astronomical and calendrical calculations could be etched. Multiple layers of plaster were applied, with multiple new columns of numbers and glyphs then getting inscribed on them  the equivalent of erasing your notes and starting over. That constant reworking was clearly worth the effort, yielding a precise and detailed system of marking time and reading the skies. Most of the east wall appears to have been given over to tracking lunar cycles and using them to frame relatively short periods in the Mayan calendar. The north wall involved planetary observations, which helped establish what the archaeologists call Long Count dates. "These [longer] spans are usually 3,000 to 4,000 years," the authors write. The numbers used in the calculations are not numerals as we know them, of course, but arrangements of dots and bars, with each dot representing a 1 and each bar representing a 5.

With the help of that simple coding, it's possible to understand some of the Mayan units of time, such as the 360-day tun unit, the 20-day winal unit and the single-day k'in. The monthly cycles of the moon are also assembled into 178-day lunar semesters. (MORE: There's Money to Be Made in the 2012 Apocalypse) "Visible atop at least five of the columns are individual moon glyphs combined with facial profiles," Saturno and his colleagues write. "Enough detail is visible on two of these glyphs to see that they are deities." The smallest timescales on the longer-range north wall are 117-day cycles, which coincide with the synodic period of Mercury  or the amount of time it takes for Earth and Mercury, when they are in a given position relative to each other, to return to that precise position as they move through their orbits. Other larger and more complex calculations suggest that the Mayans were trying to develop formulas to synchronize cycles of the moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars. These would then be assigned relevance in the Mayans' spiritual practices.

"One goal of the Maya calendar keepers," the investigators write, "was to seek harmony between sky events and sacred rituals." The calculations in the Xultun room were precursors to what's known as the Dresden Codex, a much more sophisticated series of Mayan formulas recorded on bark-paper books in the 15th century. But the 9th century Mayans working in the Xultun room were not reluctant to publish their own, more preliminary work  something that seems evident from the unusually tidy nature of the inscribed notes. "These repeatedly replastered sections may have been used as a kind of reference for the preparation of other more permanent or public monuments," the researchers write. The Mayans no doubt would have preferred that those permanent monuments were preserved, rather than just the astronomical faculty lounge in which they did their background work. But archaeology is capricious and which clues survive the centuries or are lost to them is impossible to predict. Either way, the Mayans left us plenty to ponder. None of it points to the end of our world  all of it, however, can help enrich it.

2012 in Mayan Mythology - Ancinet-Mythology.com 2012 in Mayan Mythology In recent years, there's been much talk about an approaching date on the Mayan Calendar. Famously, the Mayan long-count calendar is supposedly set to end and reset in the year two-thousand and twelve (2012), which, according to some (loose) interperetations of Mayan myths, corresponds with an end of the current creation and the beginning of the next. This has led to laregly unfounded speculation, and in some cases fears, of an apocalyptic event before the end of 2012, as well as media capitalization of the supposed event with many books and films being released on the subject. This article will attempt to very briefly explain how the long-count calendar works, what the Maya believed and what the 2012 date actually means to them. Understanding Long-Count dates The Mayan long-count calendar uses 5 divisions of numbers to indicate a date. The numbers are all base-20, except the second (or second-from-right) number which rolls over at 18.

Long-Count Date 1 b'ak'tun 144,000 days Each unit of time is equal to twenty of the previous unit, except for the tun, which is equal to eighteen winal. According to the most widely-accepted calculations, the Mayan calendar begins on August 11, 3114 BCE . The 12th b'ak'tun is nearing completion, with the date 12.19.19.17.19 calculated to be December 20, 2012 CE . On December 21, 2012 CE , the date will be "13.0.0.0.0". Creation myths According to Mayan myth, the gods have attempted previous versions of creation, and human beings are currently the third version of their creation. The creator gods Gucumatz (or Kukulkán , better known by the Aztec name Quetzalcoatl) and Tepeu wanted to create a people that would resemble them and praise them. With the help of the storm god Huracán, they began creating life, beginning with animals.

The first version of humanity was made from mud, but these people could not move or speak, and they easily crumbled. After this failed, the creators summoned other gods, and remade mankind out of wood. The wooden men were able to move and speak, but they were soulless creatures who quickly forgot about the gods. For their third attempt, the gods created men out of maize (which was the primary source of food for the Maya). The previous version of creation, according to Mayan myth, is beleived to have ended on its thirteenth b'ak'tun — that is, 13.0.0.0.0 or August 11, 3114 BCE . At this point the current creation began, and the long-count calendar reset to 0.0.0.0.1 the next day. Thus, the significance of the arrival of the thirteenth b'ak'tun in this round of the long-count calendar is that the previous creation ended on its thirteenth b'ak'tun. However, there seems to be no evidence that the Mayans themselves believed that the current version of creation would come to an end at its thirteenth b'ak'tun.

A five-numeral count will reset after the thirteenth b'ak'tun, but this is celebrated as the completion of a cycle, and was not seen as a doomsday event by Mayan culture. Mayan dates beyond 2012 Further demostrating Maya belief in the continuation of this creation is that Mayan artifacts mark future commemorations, and some of these occur beyond the thirteenth b'ak'tun in 2012. In fact, there is evidence that the Maya expected to add another numeral to its calendar when the b'ak'tun count is complete. The unit piktun is said to be the next value, although scholars disagree on whether a piktun should be considered to be 13 or 20 b'ak'tun, and there are Mayan dates scheduled beyond a completed piktun.

(Most Mayanists generally go by the convention that all five-numeral dates roll over at 13 b'ak'tun, while larger dates count 20 b'ak'tun.) If there are 20 b'ak'tun in a piktun, he first piktun would appear on the Mayan long-count calendar on October 13, 4772 CE, well beyond 2012. If there are only 13, then December 21, 2012 would become 1.0.0.0.0.1, marking the completion of the first piktun since the calendar's beginning date. The word piktun is not an original Mayan word, but evidence of higher orders is found in Mayan relics. In fact there are an additional three units, kalabtun, k'inchiltun, and alautun, all higher than the piktun. The names of all of the units above the b'ak'tun were created by scholars in the absence of knowledge of Mayan words for them.

Since the age of the Mayan civilization occured within a single piktun, however, there was no need to use more than five digits in their calendar for most uses. This alone may be the cause for confusion about the supposed end of the long-count calendar. Some interperetations of Mayan dates also suggest that the 3114 BCE date of creation is incorrect, and that the 13-b'ak'tun (or 5,125 solar year) calendar has completed before. One inscription, for example, puts the creation date at 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0. By this date, the calendar won't end until 4.134105 × 1028 years into the future, a span of time three quintillion times the scientifically-accepted age of the universe.

By that time, the sun will have long-since devoured the Earth and been destroyed itself, and the universe may have drifted apart, condensed or otherwise reconfigured itself in some unrecognizable way. If you're concerned about the fate of mankind, there are more pressing issues than the end of the Mayan calendar. No cause for alarm There are a number of new-age theories surrounding 2012, which predict anything from galactic alignment and solar flares, to alien invasion, to global consciousness. However, these predictions are not based in or accepted by science, or even the so-called predictions of the Maya themselves. They are at best misinterperetations of science and myths, and at worst total fabrications. There is simply no evidence that December 2012 will be any more important than the average month, other than the Y2K-like hysteria that has developed since. NASA - Beyond 2012: Why the World Didn't End Beyond 2012: Why the World Didn't End 12.22.12 Beyond 2012: Google+ Hangout with NASA If you're reading this story, it means the world didn't end on Dec.

21, 2012. Despite reports of an ancient Maya prophecy, a mysterious planet on a collision course with Earth, or a reverse in Earth's rotation, we're still here. The Mayan connection "was a misconception from the very beginning," says Dr. John Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy. "The Maya calendar did not end on Dec. 21, 2012, and there were no Maya prophecies foretelling the end of the world on that date." › Read More About the Mayans Video: Why The World Didn't End Yesterday For years leading up to the supposed apocalypse, NASA scientists worked to dispel the myths and answer questions on a host of 2012 topics: › View larger A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Suomi NPP satellite. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012.

Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012. Answer (A):The world will not end in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012. Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012? A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012 and linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012. Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?

A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar. Video: NASA Scientist David Morrison Debunks the Myths Q: Is NASA predicting a "total blackout" of Earth on Dec. 23 to Dec. 25? A: Absolutely not. Neither NASA nor any other scientific organization is predicting such a blackout. The false reports on this issue claim that some sort of "alignment of the Universe" will cause a blackout. There is no such alignment (see next question). Some versions of this rumor cite an emergency preparedness message from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. This is simply a message encouraging people to be prepared for emergencies, recorded as part of a wider government preparedness campaign. It never mentions a blackout. ›Watch the Video Q: Could planets align in a way that impacts Earth?

A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. One major alignment occurred in 1962, for example, and two others happened during 1982 and 2000. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence. › More about alignment "There apparently is a great deal of interest in celestial bodies, and their locations and trajectories at the end of the calendar year 2012. Now, I for one love a good book or movie as much as the next guy. But the stuff flying around through cyberspace, TV and the movies is not based on science. There is even a fake NASA news release out there..." - Don Yeomans, NASA senior research scientist Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction? A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims.

If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles. Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the Earth's crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours? A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-switch to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth.

Scientists believe a magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia. › More about polar shift Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012? A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office website , so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012. Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of the world ending in 2012? A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact.

There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012. › About super volcanoes Q: Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012? A: Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history. Mayan mathematics Mayan mathematics Version for printing Hernán Cortés, excited by stories of the lands which Columbus had recently discovered, sailed from Spain in 1505 landing in Hispaniola which is now Santo Domingo. After farming there for some years he sailed with Velázquez to conquer Cuba in 1511.

He was twice elected major of Santiago then, on 18 February 1519, he sailed for the coast of Yucatán with a force of 11 ships, 508 soldiers, 100 sailors, and 16 horses. He landed at Tabasco on the northern coast of the Yucatán peninsular. He met with little resistance from the local population and they presented him with presents including twenty girls. He married Malinche, one of these girls. The people of the Yucatán peninsular were descendants of the ancient Mayan civilisation which had been in decline from about 900 AD. It is the mathematical achievements of this civilisation which we are concerned with in this article. However, before describing these, we should note that Cortés went on to conquer the Aztec peoples of Mexico. He captured Tenochtitlán before the end of 1519 (the city was rebuilt as Mexico City in 1521) and the Aztec empire fell to Cortés before the end of 1521. Malinche, who acted as interpreter for Cortés, played an important role in his ventures.

In order to understand how knowledge of the Mayan people has reached us we must consider another Spanish character in this story, namely Diego de Landa. He joined the Franciscan Order in 1541 when about 17 years old and requested that he be sent to the New World as a missionary. Landa helped the Mayan peoples in the Yucatán peninsular and generally tried his best to protect them from their new Spanish masters. He visited the ruins of the great cities of the Mayan civilisation and learnt from the people about their customs and history. However, despite being sympathetic to the Mayan people, Landa abhorred their religious practices. To the devote Christian that Landa was, the Mayan religion with its icons and the Mayan texts written in hieroglyphics appeared like the work of the devil. He ordered all Mayan idols be destroyed and all Mayan books be burned. Landa seems to have been surprised at the distress this caused the Mayans. Nobody can quite understand Landa's feelings but perhaps he regretted his actions or perhaps he tried to justify them.

Certainly what he then did was to write a book Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (1566) which describes the hieroglyphics, customs, temples, religious practices and history of the Mayans which his own actions had done so much to eradicate. The book was lost for many years but rediscovered in Madrid three hundred years later in 1869. A small number of Mayan documents survived destruction by Landa. The most important are: the Dresden Codex now kept in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek Dresden; the Madrid Codex now kept in the American Museum in Madrid; and the Paris Codex now in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. The Dresden Codex is a treatise on astronomy, thought to have been copied in the eleventh century AD from an original document dating from the seventh or eighth centuries AD. The Dresden codex: Knowledge of the Mayan civilisation has been greatly increased in the last thirty years (see for example [ 3 ] and [ 8 ]). Modern techniques such as high resolution radar images, aerial photography and satellite images have changed conceptions of the Maya civilisation.

We are interested in the Classic Period of the Maya which spans the period 250 AD to 900 AD, but this classic period was built on top of a civilisation which had lived in the region from about 2000 BC. The Maya of the Classic Period built large cities, around fifteen have been identified in the Yucatán peninsular, with recent estimates of the population of the city of Tikal in the Southern Lowlands being around 50000 at its peak. Tikal is probably the largest of the cities and recent studies have identified about 3000 separate constructions including temples, palaces, shrines, wood and thatch houses, terraces, causeways, plazas and huge reservoirs for storing rainwater. The rulers were astronomer priests who lived in the cities who controlled the people with their religious instructions. Farming with sophisticated raised fields and irrigation systems provided the food to support the population. A common culture, calendar, and mythology held the civilisation together and astronomy played an important part in the religion which underlay the whole life of the people. Of course astronomy and calendar calculations require mathematics and indeed the Maya constructed a very sophisticated number system.

We do not know the date of these mathematical achievements but it seems certain that when the system was devised it contained features which were more advanced than any other in the world at the time. The Maya number system was a base twenty system. Here are the Mayan numerals. Almost certainly the reason for base 20 arose from ancient people who counted on both their fingers and their toes. Although it was a base 20 system, called a vigesimal system, one can see how five plays a major role, again clearly relating to five fingers and toes. In fact it is worth noting that although the system is base 20 it only has three number symbols (perhaps the unit symbol arising from a pebble and the line symbol from a stick used in counting). Often people say how impossible it would be to have a number system to a large base since it would involve remembering so many special symbols. This shows how people are conditioned by the system they use and can only see variants of the number system in close analogy with the one with which they are familiar. Surprising and advanced features of the Mayan number system are the zero, denoted by a shell for reasons we cannot explain, and the positional nature of the system.

However, the system was not a truly positional system as we shall now explain. In a true base twenty system the first number would denote the number of units up to 19, the next would denote the number of 20's up to 19, the next the number of 400's up to 19, etc. However although the Maya number system starts this way with the units up to 19 and the 20's up to 19, it changes in the third place and this denotes the number of 360's up to 19 instead of the number of 400's. After this the system reverts to multiples of 20 so the fourth place is the number of 18 × 202, the next the number of 18 × 203 and so on. For example [ 8;14;3;1;12 ] represents 12 + 1 × 20 + 3 × 18 × 20 + 14 × 18 × 202 + 8 × 18 × 203 = 1253912.

As a second example [ 9;8;9;13;0 ] represents 0 + 13 × 20 + 9 × 18 × 20 + 8 × 18 × 202 + 9 × 18 × 203 =1357100. Both these examples are found in the ruins of Mayan towns and we shall explain their significance below. Now the system we have just described is used in the Dresden Codex and it is the only system for which we have any written evidence. In [ 4 ] Ifrah argues that the number system we have just introduced was the system of the Mayan priests and astronomers which they used for astronomical and calendar calculations. This is undoubtedly the case and that it was used in this way explains some of the irregularities in the system as we shall see below. It was the system used for calendars. However Ifrah also argues for a second truly base 20 system which would have been used by the merchants and was the number system which would also have been used in speech.

This, he claims had a circle or dot (coming from a cocoa bean currency according to some, or a pebble used for counting according to others) as its unity, a horizontal bar for 5 and special symbols for 20, 400, 8000 etc. Ifrah writes [ 4 ]:- Even though no trace of it remains, we can reasonably assume that the Maya had a number system of this kind, and that intermediate numbers were figured by repeating the signs as many times as was needed. Let us say a little about the Maya calendar before returning to their number systems, for the calendar was behind the structure of the number system. Of course, there was also an influence in the other direction, and the base of the number system 20 played a major role in the structure of the calendar. The Maya had two calendars. One of these was a ritual calendar, known as the Tzolkin, composed of 260 days. It contained 13 "months" of 20 days each, the months being named after 13 gods while the twenty days were numbered from 0 to 19. The second calendar was a 365-day civil calendar called the Haab.

This calendar consisted of 18 months, named after agricultural or religious events, each with 20 days (again numbered 0 to 19) and a short "month" of only 5 days that was called the Wayeb. The Wayeb was considered an unlucky period and Landa wrote in his classic text that the Maya did not wash, comb their hair or do any hard work during these five days. Anyone born during these days would have bad luck and remain poor and unhappy all their lives. Why then was the ritual calendar based on 260 days? This is a question to which we have no satisfactory answer. One suggestion is that since the Maya lived in the tropics the sun was directly overhead twice every year. Perhaps they measured 260 days and 105 days as the successive periods between the sun being directly overhead (the fact that this is true for the Yucatán peninsular cannot be taken to prove this theory). A second theory is that the Maya had 13 gods of the "upper world", and 20 was the number of a man, so giving each god a 20 day month gave a ritual calendar of 260 days.

At any rate having two calendars, one with 260 days and the other with 365 days, meant that the two would calendars would return to the same cycle after lcm(260, 365) = 18980 days. Now this is after 52 civil years (or 73 ritual years) and indeed the Maya had a sacred cycle consisting of 52 years. Another major player in the calendar was the planet Venus. The Mayan astronomers calculated its synodic period (after which it has returned to the same position) as 584 days. Now after only two of the 52 years cycles Venus will have made 65 revolutions and also be back to the same position. This remarkable coincidence would have meant great celebrations by the Maya every 104 years. Now there was a third way that the Mayan people had of measuring time which was not strictly a calendar. It was an absolute timescale which was based on a creation date and time was measured forward from this. What date was the Mayan creation date?

The date most often taken is 12 August 3113 BC but we should say straightaway that not all historians agree that this was the zero of this so-called "Long Count". Now one might expect that this measurement of time would either give the number of ritual calendar years since creation or the number of civil calendar years since creation. However it does neither. The Long Count is based on a year of 360 days, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is just a count of days with then numbers represented in the Mayan number system. Now we see the probable reason for the departure of the number system from a true base 20 system. It was so that the system approximately represented years. Many inscriptions are found in the Mayan towns which give the date of erection in terms of this long count. Consider the two examples of Mayan numbers given above. The first [ 8;14;3;1;12 ] is the date given on a plate which came from the town of Tikal.

It translates to 12 + 1 × 20 + 3 × 18 × 20 + 14 × 18 × 202 + 8 × 18 × 203 which is 1253912 days from the creation date of 12 August 3113 BC so the plate was carved in 320 AD. The second example [ 9;8;9;13;0 ] is the completion date on a building in Palenque in Tabasco, near the landing site of Cortés. It translates to 0 + 13 × 20 + 9 × 18 × 20 + 8 × 18 × 202 + 9 × 18 × 203 which is 1357100 days from the creation date of 12 August 3113 BC so the building was completed in 603 AD. We should note some properties (or more strictly non-properties) of the Mayan number system.

The Mayans appear to have had no concept of a fraction but, as we shall see below, they were still able to make remarkably accurate astronomical measurements. Also since the Mayan numbers were not a true positional base 20 system, it fails to have the nice mathematical properties that we expect of a positional system. For example [ 9;8;9;13;0 ] = 0 + 13 × 20 + 9 × 18 × 20 + 8 × 18 × 202 + 9 × 18 × 203 = 1357100 yet [ 9;8;9;13 ] = 13 + 9 × 20 + 8 × 18 × 20 + 9 × 18 × 202 = 67873. Moving all the numbers one place left would multiply the number by 20 in a true base 20 positional system yet 20 × 67873 = 1357460 which is not equal to 1357100.

For when we multiple [ 9;8;9;13 ] by 20 we get 9 × 400 where in [ 9;8;9;13;0 ] we have 9 × 360. We should also note that the Mayans almost certainly did not have methods of multiplication for their numbers and definitely did not use division of numbers. Yet the Mayan number system is certainly capable of being used for the operations of multiplication and division as the authors of [ 15 ] demonstrate. Finally we should say a little about the Mayan advances in astronomy. Rodriguez writes in [ 19 ]:- The Mayan concern for understanding the cycles of celestial bodies, particularly the Sun, the Moon and Venus, led them to accumulate a large set of highly accurate observations. An important aspect of their cosmology was the search for major cycles, in which the position of several objects repeated. The Mayans carried out astronomical measurements with remarkable accuracy yet they had no instruments other than sticks. They used two sticks in the form of a cross, viewing astronomical objects through the right angle formed by the sticks.

The Caracol building in Chichén Itza is thought by many to be a Mayan observatory. Many of the windows of the building are positioned to line up with significant lines of sight such as that of the setting sun on the spring equinox of 21 March and also certain lines of sight relating to the moon. The Caracol building in Chichén Itza: With such crude instruments the Maya were able to calculate the length of the year to be 365.242 days (the modern value is 365.242198 days). Two further remarkable calculations are of the length of the lunar month. At Copán (now on the border between Honduras and Guatemala) the Mayan astronomers found that 149 lunar months lasted 4400 days. This gives 29.5302 days as the length of the lunar month. At Palenque in Tabasco they calculated that 81 lunar months lasted 2392 days. This gives 29.5308 days as the length of the lunar month. The modern value is 29.53059 days. Was this not a remarkable achievement?

There are, however, very few other mathematical achievements of the Maya. Groemer [ 14 ] describes seven types of frieze ornaments occurring on Mayan buildings from the period 600 AD to 900 AD in the Puuc region of the Yucatán. This area includes the ruins at Kabah and Labna. Groemer gives twenty-five illustrations of friezes which show Mayan inventiveness and geometric intuition in such architectural decorations.

Question: The calendar of which Mesoamerican people led to a fixation with the year 2012?
Answer: Maya