Maya timekeeping · living and inscribed counts
Three counts, one date
The Long Count places a day in linear time. Tzolk’in pairs thirteen numbers with twenty named days. Haab’ moves through eighteen twenty-day months and five days of Wayeb’.
20 day names × 13 numbers · 19 Haab’ periods · GMT 584283
The Long Count is positional arithmetic
Four positions advance by twenties; the tun is the deliberate exception, holding eighteen uinals or 360 days. A Long Count is not a personality sign. It is a count of elapsed days from a selected epoch.
| position | days | next position |
|---|---|---|
| baktun | 144,000 | open at the top |
| katun | 7,200 | 20 of this position |
| tun | 360 | 20 of this position |
| uinal | 20 | 18 of this position |
| kin | 1 | 20 of this position |
The two repeating counts
260 days
Tzolk’in
Thirteen numbers and twenty named days advance together. The same pairing returns after 260 days. Living K’iche’ usage is also named Chol Q’ij; Bodhastra does not flatten those language and community contexts into personality keywords.
365 days
Haab’
Eighteen periods of twenty days make 360. Wayeb’ supplies the final five. The count does not insert a Gregorian leap day; its position simply advances one day for every elapsed day.
GMT 584283 is a convention
Converting the Long Count into a Western civil date requires a correlation constant. Bodhastra uses 584283 because it matches the Smithsonian reference converter and the project’s selected fixtures. Competing correlations and historical day boundaries are real scholarly questions, so every result prints the choice.