As everyone knows tomorrow is the big Mayan Calendar thing. I have stayed away from this for the most part, until a couple weeks ago when I started getting smug e-mails and FB posts like this:
“There have been 514 leap years since Ceasar created it in 45 B.C. If we take out the leap years, today would be May 18th, 2014. The Mayan calendar didn’t account for leap years so technically (according to them) the world should have “ended” a year and a half ago. Now go about your business people! Xx ”
- Too Many Facebook Posters to mention.
Leaving aside the fact that there have been 511 leap years not 514, and that if we take out the leap year days it makes it 2011 not 2013, none of this matters because it is a completely different calendar system.
The Mayan’s use multiple calendars. There is a 365 day solar calendar that does not account for leap years, but that is irrelevant as it is not the calendar that is causing all the hullabaloo about tomorrow.
The long count calendar, which is the source of all the hubub is flipping to the next Baktun tomorrow. Todays date is baktun 12 katun 19 tun 19 uinal 17 kin 19. Tomorrow will be 13.0.0.0.0 – leap years don’t come into it. It runs like an odometer on a base 20 system except for the uinal which is base 18 (whats that all about anyway?…)
But even this is not the end as the Baktun wont flip to zero till the end of the Piktun, which happens on October 13, 4772. At that point it will be 1.0.0.0.0.0
So, happy new Baktun, make the most out of it. But it is just the 13th Baktun of a long cycle.
You can still however party like its 4772 !
In the anno Urbs condita calendar it is 2765, so we’re still 235 years out from any sort of big-wig anniversary there.
Apocalypse Not.
Let me be pedantic and say that’s actually an Aztec calendar in the image.
Mayan would be more like this: http://www.voxxi.com/myth-doomsday-mayan-calendar-explained/
Given the nitpicky nature of the post I would say your comment is more than fair.