Katun

MayaHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

20 tuns or 7,200 days (about 19.7 years).

1 katun = 622,080,000 seconds (exactly).

About the katun

Twenty tuns, or 7,200 days, add up to a katun, which Wikipedia converts to 19.713 tropical years. That is why the unit is described as roughly twenty years, although it falls about three and a half months short of that.

Katuns carried real social weight. Rulers who lived to see four or five of them could take the title of a 4-katun or 5-katun ruler, a kind of age honorific. The end of a katun was marked by ceremonies, and at Tikal large twin pyramid complexes were built to host them. Each katun was also thought to carry its own set of prophecies and associations.

After the Long Count fell out of use in the Postclassic period, the Maya still tracked katuns by the Calendar Round date on which each began, a system known as the Short Count. In the Long Count the katun is the second digit from the left of a typical date, running 0 to 19 before it rolls into the next baktun. The figure of 622,080,000 seconds used here follows from the 7,200 day count.

Sources: Wikipedia: Kʼatun; Wikipedia: Maya calendar; Steve Morse: Mayan Calendar Rules

Katun conversion chart

1 katun expressed in every other time unit:

More Maya units

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

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