12/21/2012

Question:  What is the meaning of the 12/21/2012 end date of the Mayan Calendar:

Best response:  (from quora.com)

Robert Frost, engineer/instructor at NASA

245 votes by Abhilash Harpale, Andrew Warinner, Prince Srivastava, (more)

Why does the 18-month playful puppies calendar end on 31 July 2014?  Why does the Justin Bieber calendar end on 31 December 2013?

Quite simply, they ran out of space on the calendar.  We run out of space on our calender every December 31st.  It isn't a big deal.  We just start over the next day.  

The Mayan calendar is no different.  It is designed to optimize space by using a series of concentric circles that act like gears.  A full revolution of one circle is equivalent to a cog on the next circle.

The hierarchy works as follows:  a day -> 20 days -> 360 days -> 7200 days -> 144,000 days.  That last unit (144,000 days) is called a Baktun.  Their long count calendar is designed to equal 13 Baktuns.

There is absolutely no evidence to believe that the Mayans felt that 13 Baktuns from the initiation of the long count calendar would align with the end of the world.  They could have designed their calendar so that the Uinal (20 days) wheel was actually 30 days, like our month, in which case the calendar would last another 2000 years.  The number for each wheel was selected because it was a number of significance to them - not because it would work out so that the calendar ended when the world ended.

Any Mayans around today, still using their calendar, rather than celebrating the end of the world on December 21st, will be celebrating the start of a new long count calendar on December 22nd.

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Mr. Obvious claims no originality in this post, but the original required a facebook log in to view it.  Quora, you get what you (don't) pay for - but I'm sorry; that policy is not a good one.