Talk:bʼakʼtun

Chinese transliteration

According to the Chinese Wiktionary and a few books, the transliteration of this word is 白克顿, but I can't tell if that's also a translation (i.e. if that string of characters is also used to refer to this concept). - -sche (discuss) 02:18, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Nope, the characters have absolutely nothing to do with the meaning. Just another crappy Chinese transliteration. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:04, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Holonyms and other notes

• 2007, Daniel Pinchbeck, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl:

  We are currently in the final phase of the thirteenth baktun, which began in AD 1618. After the baktun in factors of twenty, there is the piktun, calabtun, and kinchiltun, and the alautun. The alautun represents a span of time that is slightly over 63 million years. Beyond that is, apparently, the hablatun, equivalent to 1.26 billion years.

• 2011, Walter R. T. Witschey, Clifford T. Brown, Historical Dictionary of Mesoamerica, page 188:

  The same pattern continues for the next digit, the b'ak'tuns^[sic], which equal 7200 × 20 = 144000 days. Higher units, representing multiple great cycles, are carved on a few monuments. They illustrate that beyond the b'ak'tun the cycles run in base 13 rather than base 20.

• Other words to define: haab', haab; tzolk'in. - -sche (discuss) 02:58, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Moved from the entry

• "The common "Initial Series" or "Long Count" records, through a place-notational system and period-glyphs, the number of days elapsed since the "beginning date" of 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ahaw 8 Kumk’uh, in ever larger growing units of the k’in (day), the winal or winik (or 20 k’ins), the tun (or 18 winak/winiks), the k’atun (or 20 tuns), and the b’ak’tun (or 20 k’atuns; the gloss b’ak’tun was invented, it is not an indigenous Maya word; the Classic Maya word was probably pik)."
• Anthropological scholar John Eric Sidney Thompson stated that placing a Long Count of (for example) 9.15.10.0.0 in the 9th b'ak'tun is almost certainly an error, like placing the year 2009 in the 2nd millennium. The erroneous practice is, however, common among Maya epigraphers.