The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating base-20 and base-18 calendar used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is often known as the Maya Long Count calendar. Using a modified vigesimal tally, the Long Count calendar identifies a day by counting the number of days passed since a mythical creation date that corresponds to August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The Long Count calendar was widely used on monuments.

Background

The two most widely used calendars in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica were the 260-day Tzolkʼin and the 365-day Haabʼ. The equivalent Aztec calendars are known in Nahuatl as the Tonalpohualli and Xiuhpohualli.

The combination of a Haabʼ and a Tzolkʼin date identifies a day in a combination which does not occur again for 18,980 days (52 Haabʼ cycles of 365 days equals 73 Tzolkʼin cycles of 260 days, approximately 52 years), a period known as the Calendar Round. To identify days over periods longer than this, Mesoamericans used the Long Count calendar.

The Long Count calendar is divided into five distinct units:

  • one day - kin
  • 20 days - uinal
  • 360 days - tun
  • 7,200 days - katun
  • 144,000 days - baktun

Mesoamerican numerals

Long Count dates are written with Mesoamerican numerals, as shown on this table. A dot represents 1 while a bar equals 5. The shell glyph was used to represent the zero concept. The Long Count calendar required the use of zero as a place-holder and presents one of the earliest uses of the zero concept in history.

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The Mesoamerican Calendar - Ancient Americas 84

The Mayan Calendar countdown

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  • Mokey [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Having a bad start to my day and im in rich white people land amongst the worst people to ever exist but atleast I'm not mining cobalt in congo. I genuinely hate what has been done to this planet and i hate americans.

    Man we have slavery in 2023 so some dumb white lady can flood her jeans hard as fuck, and wear the shittiest non matching outfit but all the individual items are gucci and balenciaga so i guess its okay, id like to believe in communist utopia fashion and expressing yourself is still a thing just much more ethical and sustainable

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don't think fashion ever stopped being a thing in the USSR or Cuba. Even places with hyper-restrictive dress laws in Iran and France you still see fashion happening despite everything. The ways Iranian women find to express themselves while walking on the edge of the modesty laws probably has enough material for a thousand thousand dissertations.