A calendar is:
Any of various systems of reckoning time in which the beginning, length, and
divisions of a year are defined. A table showing the months, weeks, and days in at least one specific year.
And could be a schedule of events.
The Mayan culture had a major focus on calendars, and left that focus
demonstrated in stone calendars.
El Castillo, in Yucatan, Mexico, rises 79 feet above the forest floor and illustrates Maya attention to the calendar. Each of the four sides contains a staircase of 91 steps. Those, along with the top platform as a step,
add up to 365, the number of calendar days in a year.
Fears about the year 2012 rest on just one of at least three Maya calendar systems unearthed by scholars,
the "Long Count," which began on Aug. 13, 3114 B.C.
The Long Count tracks the duration of what the Maya called "great cycles" of time. The cycle we're currently in ends on 13.0.0.0.0, what we non-Maya call Dec. 23, 2012.
