Category
Long Count Units
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The Long Count is the Maya calendar used for recording dates over long spans, built from nested units: the kin (one day), the winal (twenty kin), the tun (eighteen winal, or 360 days), the katun (twenty tun) and the baktun (twenty katun). Dates are written as five numbers and the count runs from a base date correlated to a day in 3114 BCE. A baktun ending is a place-value rollover rather than a prophecy; the claims attached to the 2012 date have no basis in the Maya sources.
Facts
Overview
- Entries in the Atlas
- 5
- Size of the Traditional Set
- 5 units in standard inscriptional use: kin, winal, tun, katun, baktun 1
- Peoples and Traditions Covered
- A reckoning of the Classic-period Maya lowlands, used across many independent polities and languages; the surviving inscriptions are theirs, and their descendants are the Maya peoples of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras today. 1
Origins
- Origin Period
- First century BCE: the earliest surviving Long Count monuments date from the last decades BCE 1
Structure
- Structure
- Nested units counted from a fixed base in 3114 BCE: 1 winal = 20 kin (days), 1 tun = 18 winal (360 days), 1 katun = 20 tun, 1 baktun = 20 katun (about 394 years). Unlike the tzolkin and haab it is linear, not cyclical. 1
History
- Era of Decline
- Ninth to tenth centuries CE: monumental Long Count dating ceases with the Terminal Classic collapse; the count in use today rests on a modern scholarly correlation to the Western calendar. 1
Status
- Status Today
- Historical; not practised continuously 1
Learn More
The units of the Maya Long Count
The Long Count is the Maya calendar used for recording dates over long spans, built from nested units: the kin (one day), the winal (twenty kin), the tun (eighteen winal, or three hundred and sixty days), the katun (twenty tun) and the baktun (twenty katun, about three hundred and ninety-four years). A Long Count date is written as a string of these units counted from a fixed starting point in 3114 BCE.
Unlike the cyclical tzolkin and haab, the Long Count is essentially linear, able to fix a date uniquely across thousands of years, which made it the Maya instrument for recording history and dynastic events on monuments.
Counting the Great Cycle
The completion of thirteen baktuns, reached in December 2012, drew wide popular attention as a supposed end-date, but in the Maya reckoning it marked the turning of a great cycle rather than an apocalypse, and the count simply continues. The atlas describes the units, their values, and how a Long Count date is composed, distinguishing the Maya understanding from the modern "2012" phenomenon.
The Long Count units belong with the Maya calendrical material, the haab, the tzolkin day-signs and tones, under Calendars & Time.
Enter a year to compare these entries as the atlas records them at that moment. Leave it empty for the present. A year before the common era is entered with a minus sign, so 44 BCE is minus 44.