Just a quick note about the date December 22 (or 21; or 23), 2012..:
In any case, each calender will start anew one day, cause each calender presents a 'round'. The Mayans used 3 different
systems
- Tzolkin = ritual calender, 260 days;
- Haab = sun calender, 365 days;
- Long count
Now 13.0.0.0.0. (Long count) is the end of the calender-round (and the start of a new one).
This would be:
1872000 days after starting the maya calendar
13 Baktun 0 Katun 0 Tun 0 Uinal 0 Kin
Our actual date
is depending on the so-called correlation constant, which allows to transfer a Mayan date into our current Gregorian Calendar (or into the previous Julian Calendar). Depending of the correlation constant used, you will get different dates in our calendar.
Many correlation constants have been proposed (about 50), the ones used most often and 'scientifically' recommended are:
- the GMT with the value 584285, named after Goodman, Martinez and Thompson,
- or the Bricker-variant with 584283.
With those correlation constants you'll reach the date Dec. 21, 2012 or Dec. 23, 2012.
Yet, if you use other
correlation constants, you get to other dates of course. And the GMT is heavily doubted upon by some researchers, as several astronomic hieroglyphs on some stelae in Mexico and Guatemala really don't coincide with the dates.
So I would encourage everyone not to focus too much upon that date. Because it's derived by calculation.
And it may well be that - depending of the correlation constant you use - the Maya calender
started anew with the long count already many decades ago.
One expert I know personally very well, Anton Stock, arrived after detailed calculations and astronomic confirmations (which took him well over a
decade) to a different correlation constant, which has already been documented.
With his correlation constant of 556408 the Maya date 13.0.0.0.0. would transform into our
