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Mysty · Jul 13, 2012

Makaze said: ↑

I looked into it, and let me get a source on this...

I'm assuming you meant because of leap years.

The Mayan long count calendar is based on days, not solar cycles. Because of that, leap days are irrelevant.

Mayan calendar basics

The long count calendar is based on a series of 5 numbers each representing a number of the previous period — usually 20, except for the tun period:

http://i.stack.imgur.com/8nNrV.png

2012

The 2012 Phenomenon is based on the idea that Mayans believed their current world (the fourth world) ended after 13 b'ak'tuns:

0.0.0.0.0 is the beginning of the first b'ak'tun and 12.19.19.17.19 is the last day of the thirteenth b'ak'tun.

The full size of 13 b'ak'tuns — thirteen multiplied by 144,000 days — is 1,872,000. (This is 5128.8 periods of 365 days, so you can already see that the information cited by Wikipedia for a rough translation of solar years has taken leap days into account.)

To use this number of days to figure out the "end date", in other words, the day that corresponds to 12.19.19.17.19, all we need to know is what equivalent Gregorian calendar date corresponds to the Mayan date 0.0.0.0.0. And to know if December 21, 2012 is that date, all we need to do is figure out 1,872,000 days from the start date.

For that, we turn to this well-sourced article by John Major Jenkins, a student of Mayan time:

(emphasis added)

This same start date was also cited in Wikipedia.

Assuming, of course, that the start date is correct, there is no way a lack of leap days in the Mayan calendar could confuse this at all. Leap days must be taken into consideration in the conversion, but historians have known to do that since the leap day was invented.

1,872,000 days since August 11, 3114 B.C. is a calculation that can be made safely with the calendar information we have. The best calculator I could find was this one, in which you can enter the dates and come up with a close (too close for leap days to affect it) but not exact result of 1,872,026.

You can also try this calculator which comes up with the same calculation using August 11, 3114 B.C., but if you enter the Julian date 584283, you get the exact period of 1,872,000 days until December 21, 2012.

Conclusion

So, there you have it — yes, the Mayan calendar did not include leap days. But, it didn't need to, since they didn't have anything to do with solar years. In fact, as you can see, the closest equivalent Mayan period to a solar year, a tun, is only 360 days — already five days off.

Source: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q...ulated-date-for-the-end-of-the-mayan-calendar
Click to expand...

I read this and my mouth just drops. I knew the calender was off, but not by this much.

Jiηx · Jul 13, 2012

Makaze said: ↑

I read that in Nathan Fillion's voice.

What have you done?
Click to expand...

A glorious thing.

Makaze · Jul 13, 2012

Crimson Azoth said: ↑

A glorious thing.
Click to expand...

Effect lost with new avatar.

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Mysty Unknown

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Jiηx You're such a loser.

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Makaze Some kind of mercenary