Mesoamerican Long Count calendar 20, 2012 (Gregorian Calendar), followed by the start of the 14th b'ak'tun, 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21, 2012. There are only two references to the current creation's 13th b'ak'tun in the fragmentary Mayan corpus: Tortuguero Monument 6, part of a ruler's inscription and the recently discovered La Corona Hieroglyphic Stairway 2, Block V. Maya inscriptions occasionally reference future predicted events or commemorations that would occur on dates that lie beyond 2012 (that is, beyond the completion of the 13th "b'ak'tun" of the current era). Most of these are in the form of "distance dates" where some Long Count date is given,
Mesoamerican writing systems skin covered with stucco. These codices are read in boustrophedon, a zigzag style in which the reader follows red lines that indicate the way to read. Most of the current knowledge about the writing of the Mixtecans is due to the work of Alfonso Caso, who undertook the task of deciphering the code based on a set of pre-Columbian and colonial documents of the Mixtec culture. Although the Mixtecs had a set of symbols that allowed them to record historical dates, they did not use the long count calendar characteristic of other southeast Mesoamerican writing systems. Instead, the codices that