Comments on: Maya Holy Snake Queen’s Tomb Unearthed in Guatemala

By: Raimo Kangasniemi

Raimo Kangasniemi — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:51:21 +0000

The Mayans had set a date in August 3114 BCE and counted from that onwards in their own long count calendar. It had five numbers, which told how much time had gone from the starting date.

The first date in the calendar is 0.0.0.0.1 and the last date is 13.0.0.0.0, which will be December 21st 2012. December 22nd 2012 will again be 0.0.0.0.1.

Thanks to work in recent decades, based on astronomical data in Mayan texts etc, the Mayan long count calendar can now be correlated with the Gregorian calendar we use now.

By: Brenda

Brenda — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 23:09:47 +0000

Just wanted to point out typo–unless it has eyeballs, I don’t think you really mean temple “sight.” =)

By: Deborah

Deborah — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 19:05:15 +0000

Interesting article. Could someone please explain to me how the Mayans knew the date. I’ve read articles whereby a Mayan article was found which had a date on it. How did they know the date??? Did they know of Jesus and the year zero? How did they make calendars without starting at the year zero and moving after that? Or did their calendars start at zero? This totally confuses me……