The Maya Long Count calendar's start date
On this day · 11 August 3114 BC
Maya scribes counted history forward from a single mythic morning of creation in 3114 BCE.
The Maya Long Count was an ambitious way of fixing dates — not in repeating weeks and months, but as a running tally of days stretching back to a fixed origin. According to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, that count begins on the mythical creation date written 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ajaw 8 Kumk’u, which corresponds to 11 August 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
On that day, Maya cosmology held, the gods set three hearthstones at the center of the world and lit the first fire of the current era.
The link between Maya and modern dates rests on the Goodman–Martínez–Thompson (GMT) correlation. It is not mere tradition: a 2013 study published in Scientific Reports radiocarbon-dated a carved Tikal lintel and found the results matched the GMT correlation “at the 95% confidence level,” ruling out rival schemes off by centuries.
The same counting system famously rolled over on 21 December 2012 — no apocalypse, just a new b’ak’tun.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
