We have been receiving many questions lately about the calendar round and the types of calendars the Maya produced, inescapably, too, the end of the Maya calendar of 2012. The world didn’t end, to the grand surprise of many people. The dramatic did make its way through the psyche of may and certainly it was organized to believable – that the world would truly end. It didn’t. What a wonderful thing that we are still here! So lets revisit this time for the record; The return date of the calendar round to 13.0.0.0.0., what’s the significance?
First, we should recognize what the numbers represented. The numbers represented groups of days. The days would be organized into 5 distinct grouping which all had a name to represent the amount of days. Reading from right to left, Kin, Uinal, Tun, Katun, Baktun. These were organised as expressed below:
Kin – 1 day
Uinal – 20 days
Tun – 360 days
Katun, 7,200 days
Baktun – 144,000 days
The significance of the end date, expressed the most simplest way, is that the Maya Long Count calendar started not at zero but at 13.0.0.0.0; and in late December 2012 it once again reached the date 13.0.0.0.0 for the first time in 5,125 years, like a clock striking midnight. When the Maya created this phenomenon they may have also realised or organised that this 2012 date would herald in a new creation.
Second, the earliest known long count calendrical date in Mesoamerica, between 40 and 20 BC come from Chiapa de Crozo, Tres Zapotes and Tak’alik Abaj – the latter is a Maya site, but the other two are Isthmian, the are West of the Maya area. Interestingly, most scholars believe that the long count calendar (Haab) was not a Maya invention.
Third, archaeologists have determined that the Maya calendar may have started on August 11, 3114 BC. The round went for 5,125 years for the one date “4 Ahau”, the Tzolkin date (260 day sacred calendar) and “8 Cumku”, the Haab Solar Calendar date (365 days), to come together again since they first started the calendar round in 3114 BC.
Never-the-less, there was much pump and celebration in some parts of the Maya world, while there was utter fear and insecurity in some quarters because of the misconception and misinterpretation of the ‘end date’, and in some quarters – pure “spiritual marketing trickery” about some world-ending catastrophe that truly, the ancient Maya never predicted would occur. Its now 2017. We are still here.
That grand cycle of 5,125 years has started again.