The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal (base-20) and base-18 calendar used by several Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is sometimes known as the Maya (or Mayan) Long Count calendar. Using a modified vigesimal tally, the Long Count calendar identifies a day by counting the number of days passed since a mythical creation date that corresponds to August 11, 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar. The Long Count calendar was widely used on monuments.
Read more about Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar: Background, Long Count Periods, Mesoamerican Numerals, Earliest Long Counts, Correlations Between Western Calendars and The Long Count, 2012 and The Long Count, Calculating A Full Long Count Date, Piktuns and Higher Orders
Famous quotes containing the words long, count and/or calendar:
“Sweet ladies, long may ye bloom, and toughly I hope ye may thole,
But was she not lucky? In flowers and lace and mourning,
In love and great honor we bade God rest her soul
After six little spaces of chill, and six of burning.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)
“Through excessive exertion they put together some free time, and afterwards have no idea what to do with it except to count the hours until they’ve passed.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“To divide one’s life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.”
—Clifton Fadiman (b. 1904)