If we were to write in the calendar Maya The date on Tuesday 20 May 2025 would be written as follows: 13 as many as 11 SIPs 13.0.12.10.13. In short, as you can understand by looking at it, the Mayan calendar it is more structuredelaborate and fascinating of ours. This calendar, in fact, is a combination of Three different calendars: that sacredthe 260 -day Tzolk’in; that solarthe haab, 365 days, and the one that starts from the date of the latest mythological creation of the world, called “Long calculation“In writing a date, the first number and the first word (12 EB ‘) refer to the sacred calendar, the second number and the second word (10 SIP) refer to the solar calendar and the latest numbers (13.0.12.12) represent the distance from the latest creation. To these main calendars, others are added, based on different cycles, but still little understood.
What is the Mayan calendar
The Mayan calendar is a calendar system Used in the pre -Columbian Central America and in many modern communities of Guatemala highlands, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. It consists of three different main calendars: the sacred one called Tzolk’in; the sunny one, called Haab and the Long calculationwhich matters how many days have passed from creation. The sacred and sunny calendar combine together to create calendar cycles as many as 52 solar long years, while the long calculation is used to keep track of dates in longer periods of time. Let’s see them in more detail.
The sacred calendar: the Tzolk’in cycle and the link with pregnancy
The calendar sacredcalled Tzolk’inis the older of the three and is still in use today. It is based on the combination of Two cycles: one of 13 numbers for the date and another of 20 names for i daysa bit like we combine 30 (or 31) days of the date with the 7 names of the days of the week. We say, for example, that tomorrow it will be Tuesday 20, while they would say that it will be 13 Ben. By combining 13 dates and 20 names of the days, they are obtained 260 (= 13 × 20) unique days. If today it was 7 Muluk, for example, we would not have another 7 Muluk except after an entire cycle, that is, after 260 days.
But because just on 260 days, that is about 9 months? The most shared interpretation is that it is linked to the time of one pregnancy. This calendar, in fact, not only measures the passage of time, but the passage of “spirit“. It is thought that each day brings with them a spirit and that all born on that day have personal, character and work inclinations linked to the spirit of that day. The day we are born, which more or less will coincide with the day we were conceived in the previous” sacred year “, therefore marks our natural inclination, a bit like in the astrological papers used in the West.
The solar calendar: the Haab cycle and the 365 days
The second calendar, Haabis the calendar solar. It is formed by 18 “months”called Uinals (or winals), of 20 days each e 5 days additionalcalled Uayeb (or Wayeb). The latter were considered extremely unfortunate and dangerous, because it was the moment in which the portal between the world of fatal and that of spirits It dissolved and the malignant deities could cause disasters. To keep them away, the Maya practiced rituals such as sacrifices and fasts.
Like our calendar, also theHaab lasts 365 daysbut the days of the “months” were counted from 0 to 19not from 1 to 30. Furthermore, as far as the Maya were excellent astronomers and mathematics, they never introduced the concept of the bisastile year, thus leading to misalignments to be corrected over time.
As can be read the Mayan calendar, which combined sacred calendar and solar calendar
To keep track of the days, the Mayans they combined among them the sacred calendar with that solarobtaining a cyclic calendar composed of 18,980 unique days indicated by “Sacred Data”, “Sacred name”, “Solar date”, “Solar name”. Each day of the calendar will be re -proposed only at the end of each cycle: if today it was the 4 ahau (sacred) 8 Kumkʼu (solar), for example, we will return to have another 4 Ahau 8 Kumkʼu only in 18,980 days, which correspond to 52 years. This occurs because the sacred year lasts 260 days, the sun 365 and the minimum multiple common common between these two numbers is 18,980. 18,980, in fact, are 73 × 260 days Tzolk’in and 52 × 365 days haab.
The “long calculation”: where the idea that the world would end in 2012 was born from
If the Mayans had stopped only to these first two calendars, every 52 years they would have seen exactly the same dates. This would have created many difficulties in describing the longer phenomena in time. For this, they developed a third system: the “long calculation”. The long calculation counts i days spent starting from one date mythical of creation of world. It is structured in time cycles based mainly on multiples of 20:
- 1 k’in = 1 day
- 1 Uinal = 20 k’in = 20 days
- 1 tun = 18 uinal = 360 days
- 1 k’amun = 20 tun = 7.200 days
- 1 B’AKNUN = 20 K’AUTUN = 144,000 days (about 394 years)
A date of the long calculation therefore appears as one Five numbers sequence separated from points, for example: 7.5.3.10.3, i.e. 7 B’AKNUN, 5 K’AUTUN, 3 TUN, 10 UALAL, 3 K’IN.
While in our western calendar the year “0” coincides with the birth of Christ, for the Maya the starting point it was the date of the most recent Creation of the world. The Mayans, in fact, believe in the existence of Multiple creationsalso that take place according to cycles, as reported in the popol vuh, the collection of myths of creation. Most historians believe that the fourth creation of the world in Mayan mythology took place in 4 Ahaw, 8 Kumkʼu o 11 August 3114 BC.
Since in the popol vuh it is indicated that the third creation lasted exactly 13 B’AKNUNT, many scholars hypothesized that the current era would also last the same time. Adding 13 B’AKNUN (i.e. 1,872,000 days) to 11 August 3114 BC, you arrive at December 21, 2012. And it is precisely from this calculation that, in the 60s of the twentieth century, the false belief was born that the Mayans had predicted the end of the world on that date. In reality, on many sources Maya find dates and predictions well beyond 2012 and scholars have long discredited this sensationalistic interpretation.
On December 21, 2012 he simply marked the moment of transition between a bʼkʼun and the next one. It is like going from 1999 to 2000: an important, symbolic, but not apocalyptic event.
