Origin First century BCE: the earliest surviving Long Count monuments date from the last decades BCE
The Long Count is the Maya calendar used for recording dates over long spans, built from nested units: the kin (one day), the winal (twenty kin), the tun (eighteen winal, or 360 days), the katun (twenty tun) and the baktun (twenty katun). Dates are written as five numbers and the count runs from a base date correlated to a day in 3114 BCE. A baktun ending is a place-value rollover rather than a prophecy; the claims attached to the 2012 date have no basis in the Maya sources.
Facts
Overview
Size of the Traditional Set5 units in standard inscriptional use: kin, winal, tun, katun, baktun 1 Peoples and Traditions CoveredA reckoning of the Classic-period Maya lowlands, used across many independent polities and languages; the surviving inscriptions are theirs, and their descendants are the Maya peoples of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras today. 1 Status
Status TodayHistorical; not practised continuously 1 History
Era of DeclineNinth to tenth centuries CE: monumental Long Count dating ceases with the Terminal Classic collapse; the count in use today rests on a modern scholarly correlation to the Western calendar. 1 Comparison
Cultural Origin Era of Origin Origins
Origin PeriodFirst century BCE: the earliest surviving Long Count monuments date from the last decades BCE 1 Structure
StructureNested units counted from a fixed base in 3114 BCE: 1 winal = 20 kin (days), 1 tun = 18 winal (360 days), 1 katun = 20 tun, 1 baktun = 20 katun (about 394 years). Unlike the tzolkin and haab it is linear, not cyclical. 1 Learn More
The units of the Maya Long Count
The Long Count is the Maya calendar used for recording dates over long spans, built from nested units: the kin (one day), the winal (twenty kin), the tun (eighteen winal, or three hundred and sixty days), the katun (twenty tun) and the baktun (twenty katun, about three hundred and ninety-four years). A Long Count date is written as a string of these units counted from a fixed starting point in 3114 BCE.
Unlike the cyclical tzolkin and haab, the Long Count is essentially linear, able to fix a date uniquely across thousands of years, which made it the Maya instrument for recording history and dynastic events on monuments.
Counting the Great Cycle
The completion of thirteen baktuns, reached in December 2012, drew wide popular attention as a supposed end-date, but in the Maya reckoning it marked the turning of a great cycle rather than an apocalypse, and the count simply continues. The atlas describes the units, their values, and how a Long Count date is composed, distinguishing the Maya understanding from the modern "2012" phenomenon.
The Long Count units belong with the Maya calendrical material, the haab, the tzolkin day-signs and tones, under Calendars & Time.
Browse By
Long Count Units
Sources
1. The Maya (9th edition)
Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston, Thames and Hudson, 2015on the Long CountView the Source 2. Wikipedia: Mesoamerican Long Count calendar
WikipediaWikipedia lead section, culture
The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating base-20 and base-18 calendar used by pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya.
Wikipedia lead section, era
a mythical creation date that corresponds to August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar
View the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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