Credited to Mexico. The earliest Long Count inscription is on Stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo, Mexico, but its date is not certain and Stela 2 at Takalik Abaj in Guatemala might be earlier. The system is often popularly credited to the Maya, who inherited it.
How it began
The earliest contemporaneous Long Count inscription yet found is on Stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo, in Chiapas, Mexico, which shows a date in December of 36 BCE. Floyd Lounsbury placed the earliest reliable use of day count chronology and place notation at 36 to 31 BCE. The reading is not certain, and a stela at Takalik Abaj in Guatemala might be earlier. The La Mojarra Stela, another early Long Count monument, is epi-Olmec and not Maya.
How it works
The Long Count states how many days have passed since a base date equivalent to August 11, 3114 BCE. The count is written in place notation that is base 20 with one modified step. A kin is one day, a winal is 20 days, a tun is 18 winals or 360 days, a katun is 20 tuns and a baktun is 400 tuns. A date is a string of five numbers, such as 7.16.3.2.13 on the Chiapa de Corzo stela. A zero sign held empty positions.
What lasted
The Maya inherited their number and calendar systems from earlier cultures and used the Long Count throughout their Classic period inscriptions. Dated monuments include Stela 19 at Uaxactun, of 357 CE, and Stelae C and U at Quirigua, of 455 and 480 CE. Maya scribes wrote zero with several signs, among them a shell, a hand holding a spiral, and a three-lobed flower-like design, and the count appears in the Dresden Codex.
Where it stands today
The Long Count shows that the use of zero as a placeholder in a positional number system was developed in Mesoamerica before the start of the current era. Its inscriptions allow archaeologists to fix events of ancient Mesoamerican history to exact days in the modern calendar, using an agreed correlation between the two systems.
