The Mayan Calendar: why the world did not come to an end in 2012
In December 2012, people all around the world waited with either bated breath or scornful disbelief. The reason? Many of them believed that the world was soon going to come to an end. Not because of global warming, not because of nuclear war, but because the Mayan Calendar was about to culminate.
Luckily, several years later, the world is still here, but the mystery around why the Maya chose to stop their calendar at this specific time led to all sorts of speculation, such as the coming of a new messiah or unspeakable disasters.
However, the Maya foretold no catastrophes or second comings. Due to this fact, and because even historians still regularly disagree about certain facets of this ancient civilisation, the Maya and their calendar have intrigued modern cultures to this day.
Who were the Maya?
The Maya were one of the more established and dominant indigenous civilisations of Mesoamerica (an area we know now as Mexico and Central America).
Unlike many of the other indigenous groups of this period, the Maya situated in one specific geographical area in the tropical lowlands of what is currently Guatemala, the Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, and parts of Mexico. The sheer size and spread of this ancient population helped to prevent invasion from other indigenous tribes.
The Maya were excellent architects and their stone cities and temples are instantly recognisable due to their unique craftsmanship and artwork. However, their buildings weren’t the only legacy that the Maya left behind, as they are known to have been skilled at hieroglyphics, agriculture, pottery, mathematics, and their pervading influence - the Mayan calendar.
The Mayan Calendar
What we refer to as the Mayan calendar, is actually three interlocking calendars called the Tzolkin, the Haab, and the Long Count Calendar. The Maya used these calendars in tandem whenever they marked a wall of a temple or a monument with a date.
The Tzolkin calendar is also known as the sacred calendar as priests used it to keep track of religious ceremonies and celebrations, as well as to figure out the best times to plant crops and harvest them. The term Tzolkin also means “the distribution of days” as it consisted of 260 days and 20 periods which made up the 260 days. Bear with me – this gets a little complicated! Similar to how we structure weeks and months, the 20 periods consisted of 13 days which had their own numbers, as well as 20 different names. Once the day count reached 13, they repeated, but the 20 names continued until they ran out, at which point they started again. This pattern continued until it depleted and then it returned to the first number and name in the 260-day cycle.
The Haab was also known as the solar calendar and, similar to our year, it consisted of 365 days. However, the Maya broke these days up into 18 months that were made up of 20 days each. The Haab also included one very short month called the Wayeb which consisted of five days at the end of the year, and interestingly, it was seen as an incredibly unfortunate time when unlucky and dangerous things were more likely to happen. For this reason, during Wayeb, the Maya went out of their way to avoid outside interaction and therefore neglected most of their tasks and responsibilities. The Haab is actually slightly inaccurate, as a tropical or solar year takes slightly longer than 365 days, hence the reason why the Gregorian calendar added an extra day – the 29th February, also known as a leap day.
The Long Count Calendar was necessary for keeping track of longer periods. It was an astronomical calendar that counted the days all the way back to the beginning of time, which the Maya believed to be the 11th August, 3114 B.C. The Maya referred to the Long Count as the “universal cycle” as each sun cycle was calculated to be approximately 7885 solar years long. They also held the belief that once this cycle had run its course, then the universe was destroyed and recreated – hence the furore and theories around the end of 2012!
We know – it’s very complex. In fact, many still wonder why the Mayan calendar was so intricate.
The reason for this lies somewhat with the Maya priests as they made all the major decisions about when religious dates fell. Therefore, they created it to be as elaborate as they required, thus, the average Maya had no reason to fully understand their calendar.
Interestingly, the Mayan calendar was also used to predict the future in a similar way to the astrological zodiac as the Maya believed that the time of year in which someone was born determined their fate in life. Perhaps, in part, this is the reason why so many people placed so much stock in their calendar and what it meant when it came to an end.
Would you like to know whether you have a DNA link to the Maya that still occupy parts of southern Mexico and the Maya highlands? You can find out with My True Ancestry.
