Why do mayan calendars end in 2017

Go to the new dw. More info OK. Wrong language? Change it here DW. COM has chosen English as your language setting. COM in 30 languages. Deutsche Welle. Audiotrainer Deutschtrainer Die Bienenretter. News Mayan countdown to 'end of the world' postponed Mystics, hippies and tourists celebrated in Mexico as the world marked the end of the Mayan long count year calendar. The "calculations," Graham said, do not add up because the Maya counted in days rather than years. The Maya calendar refers to the end of a major calendrical round or cycle, called the baktun.

They used only days. So they did not have to worry about a 'year' being an inexact number of days. We do this now by adding a day every four years. But there are standard tables that cover all this which Mayanists use. Nowadays though, we can just go online and use a computer programme. Each glyph represents a personality associated with the month. The Haab is somewhat inaccurate as it is exactly days long.

An actual tropical or solar year , the time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun, takes about It is a day calendar with 20 periods of 13 days, and it is used to determine the time of religious and ceremonial events. The days in each period are numbered from 1 to Each day is also given a name glyph from a sequence of 20 day names.

The Long Count is an astronomical calendar which is used to track longer periods of time. The Mayans believed that the universe is destroyed and then recreated at the start of each universal cycle.

This belief caused the phenomenon described above, and it still inspires a myriad of prophecies about the end of the world. Before submitting this form, you should read the basic information on data protection found here. GTI will process your data to publish your comment and send you the rest of the comments to this news to the email provided, if you have so indicated. You are entitled to access, rectify and erase data, to limit their processing, to data portability, to oppose their processing, and file a complaint with the competent control authority, as well as oppose the use of your data for profiling.

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