Baktun

MayaHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

20 katuns or 144,000 days (about 394 years). The Long Count completed 13 baktuns on 21 December 2012, a date misread as a doomsday prediction.

1 baktun = 12,441,600,000 seconds (exactly).

About the baktun

The largest unit in everyday Long Count use, the baktun spans 20 katuns, or 144,000 days, about 394.26 tropical years. Dates are written with the baktun count first, so a monument reading 9.15.10.0.0 sits in the ninth baktun, and the Classic period of Maya civilization fell mainly in the eighth and ninth.

Public attention came when the count reached 13.0.0.0.0 on 21 December 2012, under the widely used GMT correlation. Popular writers called it the end of the world, but scholars note there is no evidence the Maya expected that, and the count simply moved on to 14.0.0.0.0. The next such milestone falls in March 2407.

A naming quirk follows from the numbering. The Long Count starts counting from zero, so the baktun that began in 2012 is strictly the fourteenth, though it is usually called the thirteenth. J. Eric S. Thompson judged that usage inaccurate but too entrenched to change. Larger cycles such as the piktun, at 20 baktuns, are rarely attested, and their names are modern coinages.

Sources: Wikipedia: Baktun; Wikipedia: Mesoamerican Long Count calendar; Wikipedia: Maya calendar

Baktun conversion chart

1 baktun expressed in every other time unit:

More Maya units

• kin (Maya) (time)
• winal (time)
• tun (Maya) (time)
• katun (time)

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