A Really Brief Look at the Mayan Calendar Math

So, are you now (or at all) intrigued with the Mayan Calendar and what it may mean for humanity in the near future? Well, grab your cowboy boots or whatever you need to go deep into the wilds of ancient culture. Its time to explore some mathematical concepts.

There is a lot to how the calendar works, and unlike the one most of us use these days - seven days a week, 28 to 31 days a month, 12 months in a years and so on - the Mayan Calendar was more complex. It is often described in terms of two wheels whose cogs turn together. One wheel is the tzolken, which loosely translates to "sacred calendar," which has a count of 260 days (broken down into something equivalent to 13 months of 20 days each). This works with the the other wheel - the Vague Year. This has a count of 360 days (some say 365) . These complete a 52 year cycle before starting again (which they do). This was to help them mark scarred times.

But does this have to do with 2012? It is all part of the Great Cycle, which is determined using what the Mayans termed the Long Count. Let's take it like this: we have one day. Twenty of these days equals a Vague Month. 360 days equals a Vague Year. Next in the Long Count, we have 7,200 days that is the equivalent of 19.7 years. And then we have 144,000 days or 394.2 years. Thirteen (that lucky number) multiplied by 394.2 years is one World Age Cycle. And are you ready for this? The end of this World Cycle is on December 21,2012.

There is more to it than what I have surmised, but what is interesting is that even though the Mayan people more or less vanished or assimilated into other cultures, their calender has continued, the time passing by, until...

Source: The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies, and Possibilities from Sounds True, Inc. 2007.