Page "32nd century BC" Paragraph 14

* 3114 BC — According to the most widely accepted correlations between the Western calendar and the calendar systems of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the mythical starting point of the current Mesoamerican Long Count calendar cycle occurs in this year.

The Long Count calendar, used and refined most notably by the Maya civilization but also attested in some other ( earlier ) Mesoamerican cultures, consisted of a series of interlocked cycles or periods of day-counts, which mapped out a linear sequence of days from a notional starting point.

The system originated sometime in the Mid-to Late Preclassic period of Mesoamerican chronology, during the latter half of the 1st millennium BC.

The starting point of the most commonly used highest-order cycle — the b ' ak ' tun-cycle consisting of thirteen b ' ak ' tuns of 144, 000 days each — was projected back to an earlier, mythical date.

This date is equivalent to 11 August 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar ( or 6 September in the proleptic Julian calendar ), using the correlation known as the " Goodman-Martínez-Thompson ( GMT ) correlation ".

The GMT-correlation is worked out with the Long Count starting date equivalent to the Julian Day Number ( JDN ) equal to 584283, and is accepted by most Mayanist scholars as providing the best fit with the ethnohistorical data.

Two succeeding dates, the 12th and 13 August ( Gregorian ) have also been supported, with the 13th ( JDN