How the Mayan Calendar Works

Although it has been considered as a forgotten method and reference in counting seasons and days during the ancient period, the Mayan Calendar has started to be the focus of attention for doomsday conspiracy and theorists for the past decade. This is because of the mayan calendar end of the world prophecies that is said to unfold on December, 2012, causing worldwide fear, curiosity and fascination. The ancient Mayans are an indigenous civilization from Central America and had lived thousands of years ago around Mexico's Yucatan peninsula; a race of people that are far advanced in their studies of astronomy and mathematics as well as being highly spiritual. Their advanced knowledge for astronomy and their creativity are evident in the few surviving pictorial alphabet and drawings which is also proof that the Mayans existed long before the Spanish conquistadors had reached the Central Americas.

The Mayan Calendar is among the several systems that today's archaeologists, scholars and scientists study ancient civilization with. The ancient calendar is a very advanced and mathematically accurate system that calculates the movements of the sun and the moon and the changes in the seasons. Modern scientists had attested to the accuracy of the Mayan Calendar and had even found out that it is far more accurate than the calendars that had followed it. And this mathematically accurate capability of calculating days and months and years is one of the reasons why people from all over the world believe in the end of the world 2012 predictions. So now that we are all aware of just how accurate the ancient Mayan Calendar is, the next question we should be asking is how does the mayan calendar work?

The Mayan Calendar features three periods of time and can be viewed as three different dials on a single watch, each of these dials have a specified time scale. The three time periods in the calendar is the Long Count period that relates to time periods stretching for thousands of years; the standard 365 day period called the Haab and the shortest time period, covering only a fortnight is the Tzolkin. Each dial is a finite system that covers certain times of starting and finishing points that enable its users to determine the specific start and end time of a month, year or even a millennium which is very much like the modern day calendars that we use.

The Mayans, a superstitious civilization, marks the end of each cycles which are called the Calendar Round, every fifty two years, and is seen as an unlucky time. December 21st 2012 is a date that has become synonymous with Mayan and Aztec end of the world prophecies, because the longest time cycle in the Mayan Calendar, the Long Count Calendar, which is the only calendar in the history of the world that dates back more than five thousand years, will return to zero. The mayan astrology is known for its mathematical and scientific accuracy, have they really determined when life here on earth will finally come to an end?

If you want to read more about the Mayan Calendar, visit our 2012 Official Countdown website.

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