The starting point of the Maya calendar is around 3000 years BC. It uses a combination of three dating systems: the Long Count, the Divine Calendar and the Civil Calendar. When points on these calendars, each represented as circles, coincide, a period in time ends and a new one begins. When a mark on all three circles coincide, the gods will return from their journey.
But was it actually a Maya calendar, or one of their predecessors?
In Meso-America, a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization in the 15th century. Ancient peoples in Meso-America, older than the Maya, had calendar systems.
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