An explanation of why the Mayan Tzolk’in calendar has 260 days

I have read that the reason the Mayan religious and ceremonial calendar called the Tzolk’in has a cycle of 260 days is because it refers to the gestation period of a human baby. According to Wikipedia’s Gestation, the average gestational age of a human baby is 40 weeks or 40 weeks x 7 days in a week = 280 days.

Since the human gestational age includes the two weeks before conception, the actual gestation period of a human is 260 days. BINGO! The length of the Tzolk’in.

But why make a calendar the length of a human baby’s development in the womb from conception to birth? Granted, that is a very important time for us. However, since the Maya were such astronomers and daykeepers, I wondered if there might be another explanation for the 260-day long Tzolk’in.

And, I felt hopeful when I saw the Ancient World Mysteries website, which at first seemed to say that the 260 days coincided with the orbit of the planet Venus. However, when I read the site’s article, The Mayan Calendar: 260 Days & the Venus Orbit, I realized it was much, much more complicated than that since the orbit of Venus is approximately 224 earth days. According to Keith M. Hunter, author of the above article, the 260 day cycle refers to a relationship between the orbit and the earth.

I’m interested in the Mayan calendars because I will be talking on “Do Mayan Shamans believe the world will end in 2012?” on October 26th at 7:30 p.m. at Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E., in Virginia Beach, Virginia, sponsored by the Edgar Cayce Forum.