
A baktun (properly bʼakʼtun ) is 20 ''
kʼatun'' cycles of the ancient
Maya Long Count Calendar. 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 – as viewed from the Earth or another celestial body of the Solar System – thus completing a full cycle of astronom ...
s. The
Classic period of
Maya civilization
The Maya civilization () was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writin ...
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 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.
Note
Today, , in the Long Count is (based on
the GMT correlation).
See also
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Piktuns and higher orders
Notes
References
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Maya calendars
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