2012 The Real Story

Chapter 1 The Mayan Calendar The Mayans started all the fuss over 2012 so this is the place to begin. Their civilization lived in a large area that included southern Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize and the western areas of Honduras. It reached a zenith between the third and tenth centuries BCE, but by 1200 ACE, their society collapsed. No reason for the collapse has ever been determined. It remains an enigma. When the Spanish appeared on the scene, they still encountered Mayans who spoke the language. Mayan cities, overgrown in the jungle by the vines of time, stood mute testimony to their former glory, but the natives who lived there then, had no knowledge of their existence or function. It is in part due to the mysterious disappearance of this great civilization that has added fuel to the theory that the recycling of the Mayan Calendar is a predictor of the end of civilization as the world now knows it. It was nearly the end of the 18th Century before explores penetrated the dense Guatemalan rainforest and found the Mayan pyramids, temples, monoliths and plazas complete with picture and hieroglyphic writing. The Maya kept historical record in a fashion consisting of ideographic and phonetic elements. A number of these still exists on stone monuments that tell of the day to day events in their lives, records their calendar and describe astronomic events. Diego de Landa, a Spanish priest, visited Mexico and was appointed the Franciscan provincial of Yucatan. In the manner of countless religious zealots throughout history, he set about to systematically destroy every important and valuable Mayan artifact and document he could find. While he was intrigued by the Mayans, he found their practice of ritual human sacrifice to be abhorrent. Single handedly, he changed what history had to teach us about the Mayans. In July of 1562, de Landa found a cave containing sacred Mayan statues along with evidence of human sacrifice. The priest was so incensed at the perceived barbarism that he ordered the destruction of the five thousand idols in the cave. Perhaps his most heinous historic act was to burn the entire extensive library he found in the cave. Considering the number of idols, and the extent of the manuscripts, this was likely a major repository of Mayan knowledge consistent with a “Mayan Library of Congress.” This should be a lesson for the modern Christian. Even though de Landa felt he was doing “God’s work” in eradicating what he believed to be “devil worship”, one must always examine the consequences of the act and not allow emotion to rule the day. A mere three books survived the conflagration in the cave. Regrettably, the majority of Mayan history and knowledge was lost. Still, history has treated the rampaging priest far more kindly than he deserves. In spite of his callused and savage treatment of the Mayan artifacts, his book, Refaciơn de las cosas de Yucatán published in 1566 remains the definitive text on the Mayan civilization. The book wasn’t printed for over three hundred years, but when it was, it provided the tools to decipher a phonetic alphabet the made it possible to translate nearly one-third of existing Mayan hieroglyphs. The Dresden Codex, named for the city of Dresden where the book was kept, must be included in any discussion of Mayan civilization. It is an unusual book filled with hieroglyphs which had defied translation. Ernst Førstemann, a German scholar who worked at the library, cracked the code of the Mayan calendar in 1889. This was the key to the interpretation of the myriad inscriptions on Mayan artifacts. Førstemann discovered the Codex was actually a chart with complex astrological tables that calculated the length of a year to be 365.2420 days. It is a more accurate number than can be calculated by the Julian calendar that we use today. Mayan astronomers also predicted the solstices and the equinoxes as well as the orbits of solar system planets, the cycles of Venus and Mars, and other celestial phenomena. Remember, this was far in advance of Western Civilizations attempt to do the same things. The Popol Buh and Chilam Balam are books that were written shortly after the Spanish first arrived. These books and codices combined with the discoveries in the jungle demonstrate clearly that the Mayan civilization rivaled the Greek and Egyptians in knowledge, science and architecture and was likely as old or older. The Mayan Calendar Mayan life was intricately involved with time. It was also an era when humankind struggled to understand the strange forces of the universe that dictated their daily lives. They knew the sun rose in a particular direction and set in another. They could chart its course and predict its solstices. But, why did the sun do those things? What caused drought? What caused floods, terrible storms or crops to fail? There must be someone or something out there controlling the process. In an attempt to aid their understanding, as with nearly every primitive civilization ever studied, this force was personified. The result was a religion. If there is a religion, someone has to be in charge. These were the priests. They were consulted for advice concerning religious, civil and agricultural matters. Time was so critically important in their day-to-day lives that children were named for the date on which they were born. Thus, time intertwined with religion, and to answer these questions, the priests consulted their sacred calendars. Mayan math was relatively simple using only three symbols, a shell-shaped glyph for zero, a dot for one and a bar for five to represent units from zero to nineteen. For example, the number thirteen would be two bars and three dots. The presence of a mathematical zero, was a concept the Mayans understood and was extraodinary for its time. When Christ lived, and for centuries after, the Romans were ignorant of its existence, yet the Mayans were using a shell as its symbol. It was a familiar tangile object used to represent an abstract symbol. They also used metrical calculation and place numeration which was clever for a culture that didn’t use the wheel. Despite their many calendars, Mayans marked the passageof time with three parallel cycles. The first time cycle was a sacred calendar call the Tzolkin. It used the numbers one through thirteen and a sequence of twenty named days. It is similar to the named days of the week that we use. 5-Chikchan would paralled our Sunday the 5th. 6-Kimi would correspond to Monday the 6th. Despite calculating the year as the familiar 365 days, their time measurment was different, and every 260 days the numerical/ name combinations would recur. Then the calendar would begin again. They used a numbering system based on twenty. Many believe they counted using their fingers and toes. Thirteen apprears to be an important number to Maya and it fits with the growth cycle of the moon. The moon is not visible when it is new, and when it is full remains so for two full days. This fits a thirteen day growth cycle. The length of Tzolkin could be related to the 273 day or nine month gestation period of a human fetus. Perhaps the 260 days is the time between when a woman suspects she is pregnant until she actually gives birth. Of course this is reasonable but speculative. Haab is the agricultural calander, and it consists of 18 months of 20 days each. Another five day month, considered a month of insecurity and bad luck is called Uayeb. A combination of the two calanders produces a 365 day year. The calander was used to track seasons, and solar events that occur on roughly the same day each year. There is evidence that Mayan were aware of the quarter day discrepancy, but there is no knowledge that they ever did anything about it. The two clanaders started every 260 and 350 plus 5 days, but eve