A baktun (properly bʼakʼtun ) is 20 ''

kʼatun A ''kʼatun'' (, ) is a unit of time in the Maya calendar equal to 20 ''tuns'' or 7200 days, equivalent to 19.713 tropical years. It is the second digit on the normal Maya long count date. For example, in the Maya Long Count date 12.19.13.15.12 (D ...

'' cycles of the ancient

Maya Long Count Calendar The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal (base 20) and octodecimal (base 18) calendar used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is often known as the May ...

. It contains 144,000 days, equal to 394.26

tropical year A tropical year or solar year (or tropical period) is the time that the Sun takes to return to the same position in the sky of a celestial body of the Solar System such as the Earth, completing a full cycle of seasons; for example, the time fro ...

s. The

Classic period Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian (first human habitation until 3500 BCE); the Archaic (before 2600 BCE), the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE –&nbs ...

Maya civilization The Maya civilization () of the Mesoamerican people is known by its ancient temples and glyphs. Its Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. It is also noted for its art, archit ...

occurred during the 8th and 9th baktuns of the current calendrical cycle. The current baktun started on 13.0.0.0.0 — December 21, 2012 using the GMT correlation. Archaeologist

J. Eric S. Thompson Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson (31 December 1898 – 9 September 1975) was a leading English Mesoamerican archeology, archaeologist, ethnohistorian, and epigraphy, epigrapher. While working in the United States, he dominated Maya studies and p ...

stated that it is erroneous to say that a Long Count date of, for example, 9.15.10.0.0 is in the “9th baktun”, analogous to describing the year 209 AD as in the “2nd century AD”. Even so, the practice is so well established among Maya

epigraphers Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

and other students of the Maya, that to change it would cause more harm than its perpetuation. The current practice of referring to the current baktun as ”baktun 13” or “thirteenth baktun” may stand, even though it is properly the fourteenth baktun. Alternatively, the first baktun could instead be referred to as the 0th or null to avoid this ambiguity.

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