Mayan Prophecies and Calendar - Part 1

There were 3 Mayan Calendars: Haab', Tzolk'in and Long.

The Mayan Long Calendar speaks of the end of one cycle of time moving into the next on December 21, 2012.

The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal (base-20) calendar used by several Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is sometimes known as the Maya (or Mayan) Long Count calendar. Using a modified vigesimal tally, the Long Count calendar identifies a day by counting the number of days passed since August 11, 3114 BC (Gregorian). Because the Long Count calendar is non-repeating, it was widely used on monuments.

Among other calendars devised in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, two of the most widely used were the 365-day solar calendar (Haab' in Mayan) and the 260-day ceremonial calendar, which had 20 periods of 13 days. This 260-day calendar was known as the Tzolk'in to the Maya and tonalpohualli to the Aztecs.

The Haab' and the Tzolk'in calendars identified and named the days, but not the years. The combination of a Haab' date and a Tzolk'in date was enough to identify a specific date to most people's satisfaction, as such a combination did not occur again for another 52 years, above general life expectancy.

The Tzolk'in, the most fundamental and widely-attested of all the Maya calendars, was based in the 26,000-year cycle of the Pleiades, and was a pre-eminent component in the society and rituals of the ancient Maya. The tzolk'in calendar remains in use amongst several Maya communities in the Guatemalan highlands. Its use is marginal but spreading in this region, although opposition from Evangelical Christian converts has erased it from some communities.

The word, meaning "count of days", was coined based on Yukatek Maya. The corresponding words in the K'iche' and Kaqchikel cultures of Guatemala, which have maintained an unbroken train of observance for over 500 years, are, respectively, Ajilabal q'ij and Cholq'ij. The actual names of this calendar as used by the pre-Columbian Maya are not known. The corresponding Postclassic Aztec calendar, probably based on extinct central Mexican observance, was called by them tonalpohualli, in the Nahuatl language.

The Maya used several cycles of days, of which the two most important were the Tzolk'in, or Sacred Round of 260 days and the approximate solar year of 365 days or Haab. The Sacred Round combined the repeating cycle of numbers 1-13 with 20 day names ... so that any particular combination would recur in 13 x 20 or 260 days; the day name and the number changed together: 1 Imix, 2 Ik, 3 Akbal ... as we might say Monday 1, Tuesday 2, Wednesday 3, and so on.

Because the two calendars were based on 365 days and 260 days respectively, the whole cycle would repeat itself every 52 Haab' years exactly. This period was known as a Calendar Round.

To measure dates over periods longer than 52 years, the Mesoamericans devised the Long Count calendar.

The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from August 11, 3114 BC. Rather than using a base-10 scheme, like Western numbering, the Long Count days were tallied in a base-20 scheme. Thus 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40.

The Long Count is not consistently base-20, however, since the second digit (from the right) only counts to 18 before resetting to zero. Thus 0.0.1.0.0 does not represent 400 days, but rather only 360 days.