Mesoamerican Long Count calendar

December, 2012 marks the ending of the current baktun cycle of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. The Long Count set its "time zero" at a point in the past marking the end of the previous world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to either 11 or 13 August 3114 BC in the Gregorian calendar, depending on the formula used.[2]

The Long Count kept time in units of 20, so 20 days made a uinal, 18 uinals, or 360 days, made a tun, 20 tuns made a katun, and 20 katuns, or 144,000 days, made up a baktun. After 13 baktuns, the numbers reset and the count moved to a higher order.[3] So, for example, the Mayan date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 baktuns, 3 katuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days since creation. Today, the most widely accepted correlations of the end of the thirteenth baktun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, with the Western calendar are either December 21 or December 23, 2012.[4] The first book to suggest that this date might have apocalyptic implications was The Maya by Michael D. Coe,[5] originally published in 1966, in which he said:

There is a suggestion . . . that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the thirteenth [baktun]. Thus … our present universe … [would] be annihilated on December 23, 2012, when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion.[6]

More recent academic scholars of Maya civilization have disputed the apocalyptic interpretation of the Long Count calendar end-date, insisting that it simply marks a resetting of the calendar to Baktun 13.0.0.0.0,[7] rather as the units and tens columns of a car's odometer reset to zero each time a hundred miles are completed. They also argue that the Long Count calendar does not end on 13.0.0.0.0.[8] Scholars such as Linda Schele and David Freidel[9] cite the Mayan inscription Coba Stela 1, which features the date 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0. In Mayan mythology, this date represents the age of the previous world at its ending. Because the Mayan calendar is cyclical, the above dating will also, of necessity, mark the end of the present Long Count cycle and the beginning of the next. With each column equal to twenty times its predecessor, this date lies some 41,341,049,999,999,999,999,999,994,879 years in the future, or 3 quintillion times the scientifically accepted age of the universe.

Only one Maya inscription, Tortuguero Monument 6, directly mentions the end of the 13th baktun, which corresponds to 2012. It has been defaced, though Mayan scholar David Stuart has attempted a partial translation.