Calleman Wrong About End Date of Mayan Long Count Calendar

Carl Calleman, in his first book, concludes that the Mayan Long Count calendar ends on October 28, 2011, not on December 21, 2012, the almost universally accepted date. Calleman is wrong, both in his conclusion and the assumption upon which he based it.

Calleman selected his incorrect day for the end of the Long Count calendar on his assumption that correct end date of the Long Count is December 21, 2012 -- 4 Ahau in the Long Count -- is wrong because it is not harmonically synchronized with the tzolkin, which ends on 13 Ahau. He incorrectly assumes that the only way the two can be synchronized, which he describes as the Long Count being an “overtone” of the tzolkin, is if they both end on the same tzolkin day.

In his first book, he falsely concludes: “This means that the Galactic Cycle has to begin (and end) on a day which is 13 Ahau, not 4 Ahau, as is the case of the Long Count.” (Solving the Greatest Mystery of Our Time: The Mayan Calendar, page 236). Because Calleman’s sentence construction is muddled, as is often the case in his work, remember that the Long Count ends on 4 Ahau; the tzolkin on 13 Ahau. He is saying the Long Count should also end on 13 Ahau.

He is correct that these two calendars should be harmonically synchronized. This is because the Long Count is composed of 260 katuns, making it a large-scale version of the 260-day tzolkin, a fact that he does present.

But Calleman is wrong in assuming that the only way the two calendars can be in synch is by ending on the same tzolkin day, 13 Ahau as he concludes, rather than 4 Ahau.

The Burner Day Cycles and 3 Ahau
What Calleman overlooked are the 65-day cycles of the tzolkin known as the Day Burner cycles. The tzolkin’s 260 days are divided into four cycles of 65 days each. The first Burner Day is 4 Ahau, which puts the first day of the Long Count in synch with the tzolkin.

The Burner Days were among the most important cycles of the tzolkin. The Maya began preparing for the celebration of each 20 days in advance. On the Burner Day, a huge bonfire, fire-walking and other ceremonies took place (and still do in some parts of Central America). Then they spent the 20 days following the Burner Day in what Bruce Scofield calls “re-acclimation to ‘regular life’.” (How to Practice Mayan Astrology, 2007, page 90) In each of the four Burner Day cycles, therefore, they devoted 41 days to celebrating that cycle. In the four annual cycles, they spent 164 days -- almost 40% of their entire lives -- in preparing for and celebrating the process, which underscores the significance of Burner Days such as the first one each year, 4 Ahau.

Conclusion
The Long Count’s beginning date of August 11, B.C., its end date of December 21, 2011 A.D., the tzolkin’s end date, and the first Burner Day of each year are all 4 Ahau, which makes the Long Count harmonically synchronized with the tzolkin as Calleman (along with most researchers) correctly states -- though not in the only way Calleman considered.

There are more problems with his thought processes regarding this subject and others, but this alone is sufficient to prove wrong his assertion that the Long Count ends in 2011.

This does not mean that he is wrong in this and his many other assumptions, speculations and conclusions, but it does cast a growing shadow of doubt on them. We’ll consider these in a future column in this series, Whose 2012 Is It, Anyway?.

Shay Addams
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala