Mesoamerican Long Count calendar

by admin on Jul.10, 2010, under 2012

Chichen Itza Initial Series inscription. This date (glyphs A2, B2, …, A5) is 10.2.9.1.9 9 Muluk 7 Sak, equivalent to July 28, 878 (GMT Gregorian).

December 2012 marks the ending of the current b’ak’tun cycle of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, which was used in Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Though the Long Count was most likely invented by the Olmec,^[8] it has become closely associated with the Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD.^[9] The writing system of the classic Maya has been substantially deciphered, meaning that a corpus of their written and inscribed material has survived from before the European conquest.

The Long Count set its “zero date” at a point in the past marking the end of the previous world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to either 11 or 13 August 3114 BC in the Proleptic Gregorian calendar, depending on the formula used.^[10] Unlike the 52-year calendar round still used today among the Maya, the Long Count was linear, rather than cyclical, and kept time roughly in units of 20, so 20 days made a uinal, 18 uinals (360 days) made a tun, 20 tuns made a k’atun, and 20 k’atuns (144,000 days) made up a b’ak’tun. So, for example, the Mayan date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 b’ak’tuns, 3 k’atuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days since creation. Many Mayan inscriptions have the count shifting to a higher order after 13 b’ak’tuns, or roughly 5,125 years.^[11]^[12] Today, the most widely accepted correlation of the end of the thirteenth b’ak’tun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, with the Western calendar is December 21, 2012,^[1] with December 23 remaining another option.

In 1957, Mayanist and astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson wrote that “the completion of a Great Period of 13 b’ak’tuns would have been of the utmost significance to the Maya”.^[13] In 1988, anthropologist Munro S. Edmonson added that “there appears to be a strong likelihood that the eral calendar, like the year calendar, was motivated by a long-range astronomical prediction, one that made a correct solsticial forecast 2,367 years into the future in 355 B.C.” (sic)[14] In 1966, Michael D. Coe more ambitiously asserted in The Maya that “there is a suggestion … that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the thirteenth [b'ak'tun]. Thus … our present universe [would] be annihilated [in December 2012]^[a] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion.”^[15]

Coe’s apocalyptic connotations were accepted by other scholars through the early 1990s.^[16] In contrast, later researchers said that, while the end of the 13th b’ak’tun would perhaps be a cause for celebration,^[3] it did not mark the end of the calendar.^[17] “There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012,” says Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone, “The notion of a “Great Cycle” coming to an end is completely a modern invention.”^[18] In their seminal work of 1990, Maya scholars Linda Schele and David Freidel, who reference Edmonson, argue that the Maya “did not conceive this to be the end of creation, as many have suggested,”^[19] citing Mayan predictions of events to occur after the end of the 13th b’ak’tun. Stela 1 at Coba, for example, gives a date with twenty units above the b’ak’tun, placing it either 4.134105 × 10²⁸ years in the future,^[19] or an equal distance in the past.^[20] Either way, this date is 3 quintillion times the age of the universe, demonstrating that not all Mayans considered the 5,125-year cycle as the most important. In fact, many different Maya city-states employed the Long Count in different ways. At Palenque, evidence suggests that the priest timekeepers believed the cycle would end after 20 b’ak’tuns, rather than 13. A monument commemorating the ascension of king Pakal the Great connects his coronation with events as much as 4000 years after, indicating that those scribes did not believe the world would end on 13.0.0.0.0.^[21]