Can we just stop it?
An actual expert is quoted, and he says actual correct things about the Long Count, and notice that no where in his statement does he say that erroneous leap-year based calculations cause the end to change:
“As far as we know, the people of Mesoamerica, the Maya included, didn’t care about leap years,” Anthony Aveni, an expert in ancient Mesoamerican astronomy at Colgate University told the National Geographic.
“Our philosophy about leap year is a complicated scheme to make the seasons jibe with the calendar,” Aveni said. “They were more concerned that time should be unbroken, not interfered with, and that the count of time should have continuity.”
Exactly. The Long Count Calendar counts DAYS. It doesn’t count years. It doesn’t care about leap years.
Even if you assume that the Long Count is only 13 Baktuns long (I’m not in that group, but I respect the thinking of those who are; 20 Baktuns makes way more sense to me)…it’s still way past 13 Baktuns. The new chosen date, June 3, 2016, is 13.0.3.9.0 3-Zotz 3-Ahau. Ahau is indeed the end of a cycle—a 20 day one. Every 20 days there’s an Ahau date.
Notice that the Long Count date starts with 13. That’s because Baktun 13 started in 2012, right on schedule, 1,872,000 days after it began. It doesn’t matter if you correlate it with the Jewish calendar, the Islamic calendar, the Egyptian calendar (which the article does mention, who knows why). It counts DAYS not YEARS and it is not a solar calendar. A day is a day is a day. The correlation between the Mayan calendars and the Gregorian calendar (our calendar) changes by a day every leap year (that’s why it’s so hard to calculate).
(Also, the concept of a "leap year" wasn't invented until 45 BC, 3000+ years after the beginning of the Long Count.)
Dragging the 365-day Haab calendar into the mix is just obfuscation and ignorance (and the Haab also doesn’t have leap years). The Haab isn’t contained within the structure of the Long Count the way the Tzolkin is and doesn’t synch up with it. Instead, the Long Count has the Tun period, which is 18 20-day Uinal periods to approximate a year. But again, the point of the Long Count was to count DAYS not YEARS. It’s an odometer where most sections are 0-19 (except the Tun, which is 0-17), created by people who used base-20 instead of base-10.
Bringing in a Western astrology chart is also obfuscation, because Western and Mesoamerican astrology are not related in any way.
The 1260 day difference is because… it’s been 1260 days since 13.0.0.0.0.
Stop spreading lies through ignorance, please.
