So I'm trying to figure out this statement about the Mayans didnt count leap years?

[Jack]

There have been about 514 Leap Years since Caesar created it in 45BC. Without the extra day every 4 years, today would be July 28, 2013. Also, the Mayan calendar did not account for leap year…so technically the world should have ended 7 months ago.

I actually don't get this ... See how it says without the extra day , shouldn't it say" with the extra day " because we're adding the extra day ...

Please help me !!!

[Kayla]

So a leap year actually means that Febraury has 29 days instead of 28. This occurs every 4 years meaning on leap year, there are 366 days in the year rather than 365. The Mayans did not add these extra days so they are ahead of us , so yes the world should have ended 7 months ago based on their calculations. The " without" means their lack of adding 1 day to February every 4 years. I know. It's confusing.

[SpartanCanuck]

It's bunk. The Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar counts days, not years. The conversion method devised by modern archaeologists DOES incorporate leap years. The start of the 13th baktun cycle is Dec 21, 2012.

That said, this is irrelevant to whether or not the world will end. Ancient prophecy has a lousy track record of predicting the end of the world, and the only "Mayan prophecy" on the subject was invented in the 20th Century. There is no evidence that pre-Columbian Mayans held such a belief, even as superstition.

[Brigalow Bloke]

Your basic problem is that you are barking up the wrong tree by assuming the Maya counted years in some form for this. They did not. 21 or just perhaps 23 December 2012 is the end of the 13th bak'tun, which is a period of 1,872,000 DAYS since the count started on 11 or 13 August 3114 BCE.

We run one calendar, two if you count the religious calendar of Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Advent, Christmas etc. The Maya ran a few different ones, and some of them were not quite compatible with the others. They were perfectly aware that the year was not exactly 365 days long, but that did not matter to the long count, which was of DAYS.

For centuries, old world astronomers have been able to calculate the dates and times of eclipses of the Sun down to within an hour, or more recently, to better than a minute. They can also predict eclipses into the far future because the movement of the Moon and Earth are regular and very close to exactly constant.

The Maya recorded eclipses. They might have been able to predict them too. So if the Maya recorded an eclipse on a particular day, and another one X days later, all that has to be done is for someone to go through both sets of records and find eclipses that could be seen in Central America that same number of days apart. A third of fourth match means your calculation is almost certainly correct.

Apart from that, the Maya were NOT destroyed by the Spanish and they did NOT vanish. Their civilisation declined 500 or so years before the Spanish arrived due to drought, but they did not die out. Some of them allied with the Spanish against other Central American nations and some of them remained independent right up to just after 1600, when the last independent city was conquered by the Spanish allied with other Maya. They recorded events in their own records and the Spanish did the same. So you can match those as well.

All this was done 80 - 100 years ago by Goodman, Martinez and Thompson, working independently at different times and they all got the same answers. The start of the long count was 11 August 3114 BCE by our present calendar. It does not matter what Julius Cesar or Pope Gregory might have called it, by OUR calendar it was 11 August 3114BCE. If you want further confirmation, there are Mayan buildings with dates on them and the timber in the building carbon dates to within a few years of the Mayan date.

Now if the start of the long count was 11 August 3114BCE, then 1,872,000 days later it will be 21 December 2012CE. While I'm at it, the Maya did not count by tens, they counted by 20 and 18s. 20 times 18 times 20 times 20 days is a bak'tun, or 144,000 days. 13 bak'tuns is 1,872,000.

Your other assumption is they the Maya predicted the end of the world at the end of the 13th bak'tun. They didn't. They did predict that King Pacal would be remembered at the end of the 20th bak'tun, which is in 4772CE by our calendar. So if we have an end of the world this year, who is going to be around to remember poor old Pacal in 2760 years time?

So you have spent a lot of time trying to calculate something using methods which are totally irrelevant to it. It has not been completely wasted, since you have probably learned something. Don't trust stuff on Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo! Answers, flash web sites or YouTube clips.

[poldi]

It doesn't matter if the Mayans knew about leap years. Their calendar was a counting of DAYS, not of years.

The scholars that translated the Long Count calendar in our current calendar DID know about leap years and took those days into account.

I am curious why anyone thinks it matters...?