The only thing that is interesting about this date is that we
understand the Mayan Calender and its link to astronomy and their
marvelous system for doing large numbers. This allowed for a date in
the distant future to be easily named but likely linked to an extant
event as the one real point of reference. It may even be
astronomical but just as plausibly honoring a ruler who came under
the correct signs thus linking it indirectly to astronomy.
In the meantime it is worth noting just how well the ancients managed
to study the stars and the movement of objects in the Solar System.
The Mayan achievement was extraordinary.
In my lifetime, all this was successfully interpreted and ferreted
out of their jungle grave yards.
Mayas may have made
some prophecies, but not about a 2012 apocalypse
By Adriana Gomez
Licon, The Associated Press December 20, 2012 9:26 AM
Read more:
MEXICO CITY - As the
clock winds down to Dec. 21, experts on the Mayan calendar have been
racing to convince people that the Mayas didn't predict an apocalypse
for the end of this year.
Some experts are now
saying the Mayas may indeed have made prophecies, just not about the
end of the world.
Archaeologists,
anthropologists and other experts met Friday in the southern Mexico
city of Merida to discuss the implications of the Mayan Long Count
calendar, which is made up of 394-year periods called baktuns.
Experts estimate the
system starts counting at 3114 B.C., and will have run through 13
baktuns, or 5,125 years, around Dec. 21. Experts say 13 was a
significant number for the Mayans, and the end of that cycle would be
a milestone — but not an end.
Fears that the
calendar does point to the end have circulated in recent years.
People in that camp believe the Maya may have been privy to impending
astronomical disasters that would coincide with 2012, ranging from
explosive storms on the surface of the sun that could knock out power
grids to a galactic alignment that could trigger a reversal in
Earth's magnetic field.
Mexican government
archaeologist Alfredo Barrera said Friday that the Mayas did
prophesize, but perhaps about more humdrum events like droughts or
disease outbreaks.
"The Mayas did
make prophecies, but not in a fatalistic sense, but rather about
events that, in their cyclical conception of history, could be
repeated in the future," said Barrera, of the National Institute
of Anthropology and History.
Experts stressed that
the ancient Mayas, whose "classic" culture of writing,
astronomy and temple complexes flourished from A.D. 300 to 900, were
extremely interested in future events, far beyond Dec. 21.
"There are many
ancient Maya monuments that discuss events far into the future from
now," wrote Geoffrey Braswell, an anthropologist at the
University of California, San Diego. "The ancient Maya clearly
believed things would happen far into the future from now."
"The king of
Palenque, K'inich Hanaab Pakal, believed he would return to the Earth
a couple of thousand years from now in the future," Braswell
wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "Moreover, other
monuments discuss events even before the creation in 3114 B.C."
Only a couple of
references to the 2012 date equivalency have been found carved in
stone at Mayan sites, and neither refers to an apocalypse, experts
say.
Such apocalyptic
visions have been common for more than 1,000 years in Western,
Christian thinking, and are not native to Mayan thought.
"This is thinking
that, in truth, has nothing to do with Mayan culture," said
Alexander Voss, an anthropologist at the University Of Quintana Roo,
a state on Mexico's Caribbean coast. "This thing about looking
for end-times is not something that comes from Mayan culture."
Braswell compared the
Mayan calendar, with its system of cycles within cycles, to the
series of synchronized wheels contained in old, analogue car
odometers.
"The Maya long
count system is like a car odometer," Braswell wrote. "My
first car (odometer) only had six wheels so it went up to 99,999.9
miles. That didn't mean the car would explode after reaching 100,000
miles."
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