February 12, 2026
Calendar beef, stone receipts
The missing digit of Stela C
A broken stone, a found ‘7’, and a full-on calendar war online
TLDR: A farmer’s find confirmed the missing digit on an Olmec stone was “7,” dating it to September 3, 32 BCE. The comments erupted over how we convert that to modern dates, debating eclipse-based syncing vs. scholarly constants—plus jokes that a “baktun” is basically a millennium.
Archaeology just dropped a plot twist: a broken Olmec stone, Stela C, had a missing first digit. The Stirlings guessed “7,” and decades later a farmer found the other half and proved them right, pinning the date to September 3, 32 BCE using the Long Count calendar. Cue comment chaos. Luc swoops in to calm the crowd, noting the line drawing actually shows both halves with the “7” just above the break—translation: yes, the top half turned up later. Cornholio wants receipts, grilling the mysterious “constant” that converts Long Count to our calendars, sparking a deep dive into the Goodman–Martínez–Thompson correlation. Enter math friend energy: Gro‑Tsen breaks it down with the “Julian day” count-of-days trick (what that is), plus the spicy reminder that “32 BCE” maps to −31 in astronomer-speak. Meanwhile, meme mode activates: one commenter flexes that a baktun (Long Count chunk) is basically centuries (more here), turning “a few baktuns” into “a whole millennium.” The strongest opinions? Whether historians can really sync ancient inscriptions to within a few days—some argue eclipses and recorded events, others cry “too neat.” And the drama kicker: if that digit had been “8,” we’d be in 362 CE. That tiny “7” rewrites the vibe.
Key Points
- •In 1939, Marion and Matthew Stirling found the lower half of Olmec Stela C with a partial Long Count date missing its leading digit.
- •The Stirlings inferred the missing digit was 7; skepticism remained until the upper half was found in 1969, confirming the digit.
- •The complete date 7.16.6.16.18 converts to 1,125,698 days since the Long Count creation and corresponds to Sept. 3, 32 BCE (proleptic Julian).
- •The Long Count is mostly base-20 with the penultimate unit in base-18; units are baktun, katun, tun, uinal, and kin.
- •Conversion to Western calendars uses the Julian Date and a debated “Mayan correlation” constant to align the systems.