Sacred round Mesoamerican calendars that is, those devised by the pre-Columbian cultures of present-day Mexico and Central America continue to be used in one form or another to the present day, having passed from the Olmecs (1500400 BC) to the Maya (up to AD 900) and then to the Aztecs (up to the 1500s; pictured is an Aztec calendar at the Mexico Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City).
The Maya used three inter-locking calendars that created ‘Great Cycles’ of time. The present cycle is due to end on 23 December 2012, at which time the Maya would expect not the end of the world but a spiritual ‘rebirth’.