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2012 Calendar - Mayan Calendar
The 2012 calendar or Mayan Calendar is the basis of the 2012 Prophecy. It is a non-repeating, vigesimal (base-20) and base-18 calendar used by several Pre - Colombian cultures, most notably the Mayans. For this reason it is called the Mayan 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 Gregorian calendar. The Mayan calendar was widely used on monuments. BackgroundAmong other calendars devised in pre-Columbian times, two of the most widely used were the 365-day solar calendar (the Maya version is known as the Haab') and the 260-day calendar, with 20 periods of 13 days. In Mayan studies this 260-day calendar is known as the Tzolk'in; the equivalent Aztec calendar is known by a Nahuatl name, Tonalpohualli. 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 identifies a specific date in a combination which did not occur again for 52 years. The two calendars based on 365 days and 260 days repeat every 52 Haab' years, a period generally known as the Calendar Round. To designate dates over periods longer than 52 years, some Mesoamericans utilized the Long Count calendar. Calculation of Long Count Dates
Long Count dates are written with Mesoamerican numerals, as shown on this table below. 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. Numerical Order
On Maya monuments, the Long Count syntax is more complex. The date sequence is given once, at the beginning of the inscription, and opens with the so-called Introductory series that was explained very well in the early mayan books. The 2012 calendar itself is the reason the 2012 Prophecy is foretold.
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