The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating base-20 and base-18 calendar used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is often known as the Maya Long Count calendar. Using a modified vigesimal tally, the Long Count calendar identifies a day by counting the number of days passed since a mythical creation date that corresponds to August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The Long Count calendar was widely used on monuments.

Background

The two most widely used calendars in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica were the 260-day Tzolkʼin and the 365-day Haabʼ. The equivalent Aztec calendars are known in Nahuatl as the Tonalpohualli and Xiuhpohualli.

The combination of a Haabʼ and a Tzolkʼin date identifies a day in a combination which does not occur again for 18,980 days (52 Haabʼ cycles of 365 days equals 73 Tzolkʼin cycles of 260 days, approximately 52 years), a period known as the Calendar Round. To identify days over periods longer than this, Mesoamericans used the Long Count calendar.

The Long Count calendar is divided into five distinct units:

  • one day - kin
  • 20 days - uinal
  • 360 days - tun
  • 7,200 days - katun
  • 144,000 days - baktun

Mesoamerican numerals

Long Count dates are written with Mesoamerican numerals, as shown on this table. A dot represents 1 while a bar equals 5. The shell glyph was used to represent the zero concept. The Long Count calendar required the use of zero as a place-holder and presents one of the earliest uses of the zero concept in history.

The Mesoamerican Calendar - Ancient Americas 84

The Mayan Calendar countdown

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  • vomit_sounds [any]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Therapist fucked me over. I will definitely just order estrogen. She even said the fucking t slur when talking about support groups. She was so nice otherwise for like two years but turns out she didn’t even give me anything close to transition gatekeep-check boxes and strung me along so she could get money from health insurance and now has found another client ig.

    This week saw death threats, teen cliques trying to give me shit for wearing striped knee highs, random people flipping me off and general off-handed remarks. I found out I am pretty good at making people flinch away by staring them down.

    Only place I felt kind of calm was when there were weirder people drawing attention away from me. Also, is JDPON meming allowed in here?

    • iridaniotter [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      WTF, so sorry all that has happened to you!

      JDPON-posting should be fine. Bonus points if you post new SLAMMER content (I refuse to move to Blue Sky or wherever they’re posting from now)

      • vomit_sounds [any]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        I do my own memes, but I can’t post the recent one as it involves the razing of my specific town (look up anybody razing some european city in some early modern war and insert 5 famous fascists associated with the town being fireballed and you have a rough idea)