|
|
The Mayan calendar is actually a system of distinct calendars and almanacs used by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and by some modern Maya communities in highland Guatemala.
These calendars could be synchronised and interlocked in complex ways, their combinations giving rise to further, more extensive cycles. The essentials of the Maya calendric system are based upon a system which had been in common use throughout the region, dating back to at least the 6th century BCE.
The Mayan calendar shares many aspects with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Zapotec and Olmec, and contemporary or later ones such as the Mixtec and Aztec calendars. Although the Mesoamerican calendar did not originate with the Maya, their subsequent extensions and refinements to it were the most sophisticated.
Along with those of the Aztecs, the Maya calendars are the best-documented and most completely understood. In fact, the Maya were the only civilization of the Americas with a written language.
|
By the Maya mythological tradition, as documented in Colonial Yucatec accounts and reconstructed from Late Classic and Postclassic inscriptions, the deity Itzamna is frequently credited with bringing the knowledge of the calendar system to the ancestral Maya, along with writing in general and other foundational aspects of Maya culture.
The Mayan calendar comprises several calendars that work together like the gears in a wristwatch.
The most important of these calendars is one with a period of 260 days. This 260-day calendar was prevalent across all Mesoamerican societies, and is of great antiquity (almost certainly the oldest of the calendars). This calendar is commonly known by scholars as the Tzolkin. The Tzolk'in combined with another 365-day calendar (known as the Haab, or Haab' ), to form a synchronised cycle lasting for 52 Haabs, called the Calendar Round. Smaller cycles of 13 days (the trecena) and 20 days (the veintena) were important components of the Tzolk'in and Haab' cycles, respectively.
A different form of calendar was used to track longer periods of time, and for the inscription of calendar dates, such as identifying when one event occurred in relation to others. This form, known as the Long Count, is based upon the number of elapsed days since a mythical starting point, and was capable of being extended to refer to any date far into the future.
The Long Count calendar involved the use of a positional notation system, in which each position signified an increasing multiple of the number of days. The Maya numeral system was essentially vigesimal (i.e., base-20), and each unit of a given position represented 20 times the unit of the position which preceded it. An important exception was made for the second place value, which instead represented 18 × 20, or 360 days, more closely approximating the solar year than would 20 × 20 = 400 days. It should be noted however that the cycles of the Long Count are independent of the solar year.
Many Maya Long Count inscriptions are supplemented by what is known as the Lunar Series, another calendar form which provides information on the lunar phase and position of the Moon in a half-yearly cycle of lunations.
A 584-day Venus cycle was also maintained, which tracked the appearance and conjunctions of Venus as the morning and evening stars. Many events in this cycle were seen as being inauspicious and baleful, and occasionally warfare was timed to coincide with stages in this cycle.
Other, less-prevalent or poorly-understood cycles, combinations and calendar progressions were also tracked. An 819-day count is attested in a few inscriptions; repeating sets of 9- and 13-day intervals associated with different groups of deities, animals and other significant concepts are also known.
The Ascendancy and The Mayan Calendar: Excerpt
Chapter 46: Mathematical Prophecy from the Past
Though the stars glistened radiantly against the black sky and the Salt Flats glimmered bluish-white under the cool moonlight, the four travelers knew that the night would be short; soon the sun would rise up over the distant mountains and scorch the flat plains. They had little time. Every step taken was a race for survival against each tick of the clock.
In front, Jack and Caitlin led the way keeping a brisk pace. Behind them, Potter Sims and Gandor followed, Potter Sims flapping his transparent wings and bouncing clumsily along next to Gandor, who waddled with a steady rocking back and forth motion with each step.
“What do you know about the Mayan calendar?” Caitlin asked.
“I know their calendar ends on the solstice in 2012.”
“I did my doctoral dissertation on the Mayans,” Caitlin said as she gazed into Jack’s rich, green eyes. “The Mayan calendar is based upon thirteen cycles called baktuns, or Heavens. A baktun is a period of a 400 tuns. Each tun equals 360-days…”
“Baktuns!” Potter Sims interrupts yelling from behind. “Are you kidding?”
Caitlin turns, “No, I am not. You should pay attention, you might learn something!”
Potter Sims and Gandor quicken their pace to catch up with Jack and Caitlin.
“Our calendar on earth has 365 days in a year; the Mayan calendar has 360 days. Therefore, each of the thirteen baktuns, or Heavens, is 400 tuns times the number of days, which is 360. That equals 394 solar years. That means that the Mayans predicted political and social events, conflicts and wars, the conquests of entire nations and civilizations, and the prospering of nations according to these thirteen baktuns of 394 years.”
“What nations?” Gandor asked as he chugged along trying to keep up.
“Our planet has always had a struggle between the East and the West. During the baktuns or Heavens with odd numbers, there was expansion and conquest movement toward the east and the west midline, which passes through Central Europe and Central Africa. Heaven or Baktun Number 9 saw the expansion of the Roman Empire during the time of Christ. It was roughly around 40 CE. Three hundred and ninety-four years later, according to the Mayan calendar, mankind entered Heaven 10, an even number baktun. That was around 434 CE and it marked the invasion of the Huns under Attila. It was the collapse of the Roman Empire.”
“Tuns! Baktuns! Heavens!” Potter Sims exclaimed. “What does it mean?”
“It means,” explained Caitlin calmly, “that the end of the thirteen Heavens, or Baktuns is the year 2012, that is the end of the Mayan Calendar. The Mayans predicted that the year 2012 would end one era and signal a new era of great change.”
“Like the Great Shift in Inca prophecy.” Jack said.
“And the Hopi,” Caitlin said as the two kept pace with each other.
“All of these indigenous peoples, separated by continents and hundreds of years, having no contact with one another, all have similar prophecies,” Jack mused while he looked up at the sparkling stars.
“Remarkable isn’t it.” Caitlin said in a monotone that underscored a tone of detached, academic reflection.
“Do you know who Dr. Eliyahu Rips is?” Jack asked.
“No.”
“He is a famous Israeli mathematician. He used a super computer and discovered a series of embedded codes in the Torah.”
“What kind of codes?” Caitlin asked.
“Can you slow down?” Potter Sims yelled from behind them, as he bounced along buzzing his wings in spurts and Gandor waddled in his hurried back and forth cadence like a penguin.
“Keep up!” Jack yelled back.
“Easy for you to say!” Potter Sims shouted back.
Jack looked to Caitlin and grinned. Using his hands, he became animated while he walked, as if he was drawing words in the night air. “Dr. Rips removed all of the spaces, all the capitalizations and punctuation from the Torah, and fed the text into the computer. The computer found patterns of words and phrases that prophesied events that had not yet happened when the Torah was written. Some of these events have already happened, some have not.”
“What kinds of events are you talking about?” Caitlin asked with skepticism in her voice.
“World War II, the assassination of John Kennedy, of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and 9-11,” Jack said.
Caitlin listened silently, captivated by Jack’s wealth of information, but she was guarded. What he said sent up red flags; it had the earmarks of information that her academic discipline disparaged, like the fodder printed in the National Enquirer, ideas embraced by soothsayers and mystics.
“The year,” Jack continued, “that stands out is ‘2012,’ the end of the Mayan calendar. Other words in the Torah’s text spell out, ‘Earth annihilated.’”
“Look, I don’t believe in things like that. I never have. I am a scientist.”
“What about the disappearance of Pachakutek?”
“I am sure there is a scientific explanation for it. We just haven’t found it yet,” Caitlin answered confidently. “Can I be frank?”
“Sure.”
“Obviously, you are bright and well read, but frankly, I am surprised that you believe in things like that.”
“By things like that, do you mean religion?” Jack’s voice had an edge in it. Religion was a powerful word that raised an eyebrow in many intellectual circles, and he knew it.
“What people call religion. Spirituality. Mysteries. Unexplained phenomena.” Caitlin answered.
“Look up there,” Jack said pointing up to the millions of stars sparkling in the crisp black night sky.
Caitlin looked up at the vastness of the universe hanging above the Salt Flats, as if looking up at the stars was something novel to this famous astronomer, who had a zealous fascination for stargazing since she was six years old. Nevertheless, she humored him.
“You think mankind is going to know everything about all of that?” Jack said.
“Eventually.”
“Don’t you think that is arrogant?”
“I am not arrogant,” Caitlin defended herself.
“Perhaps arrogant is not the right word. Pride. The Greeks called it hubris. It is the idea that man’s discoveries and technical advances will allow him to eventually know and manipulate anything.”
“You make it sound criminal.”
“Not criminal, dangerous. You see, I think that there are things that we will never understand because there are forces far, far greater than us that we must surrender to,” Jack said.
Caitlin did not respond.
“I think that I am finally beginning to understand,” Jack said. “Arrogance and pride will be the downfall of our planet, and your planet Pachakutek is the omen. It’s a warning of doomsday or the herald of a new and visionary world.”
Nobody said anything as their steps crunched on the Salt Flats. It became an unnerving crunching noise, a constant sound pushing each traveler to reflect. In the distance, the gentle fingers of pink painted the indigo sky. The sun was coming.
“Are we still going the right way?” Potter Sims broke the silence.
Caitlin turned slightly around while she kept walking. “Pachakutek is still there,” she said as she pointed to the planet surrendering its light to the purples and pinks of the air brushed dawn. “We are following it, so we are not lost.”
“Good!” Potter Sims said.
“Sims, you are such a phrenetic!” Gandor said as he rapped his pipe hard against his side, dropping shreds of burnt tobacco on the white salt bed.
“You can fly out of here! We can’t!”
“How many times have I told you that I am not going to leave my friends!” Gandor said.
“That a way, Gandor.” Jack said.
“Humph!” Potter Sims grumbled to himself.
Jack looked at Caitlin and they both forced a smile. As the temperature rose with the sun, so did their anxieties for they had a long way to go.
Maya Concept of Time:
With the development of the place-notational Long Count calendar, the Maya had an elegant system with which events could be recorded in a linear relationship to one another, and also with respect to the calendar ("linear time") itself. In theory, this system could readily be extended to delineate any length of time desired, by simply adding to the number of higher-order place markers used (and thereby generating an ever-increasing sequence of day-multiples, each day in the sequence uniquely identified by its Long Count number).
In practice, most Maya Long Count inscriptions confine themselves to noting only the first 5 coefficients in this system (a b'ak'tun-count), since this was more than adequate to express any historical or current date (with an equivalent span of approximately 5125 solar years). Even so, example inscriptions exist which noted or implied lengthier sequences, indicating that the Maya well understood a linear (past-present-future) conception of time.
However, and in common with other Mesoamerican societies, the repetition of the various calendric cycles, the natural cycles of observable phenomena, and the recurrence and renewal of death-rebirth imagery in their mythological traditions were important and pervasive influences upon Maya societies. This conceptual view, in which the "cyclical nature" of time is highlighted, was a pre-eminent one, and many rituals were concerned with the completion and re-occurrences of various cycles. As the particular calendaric configurations were once again repeated, so too were the "supernatural" influences with which they were associated. Thus it was held that particular calendar configurations had a specific "character" to them, which would influence events on days exhibiting that configuration.
Divinations could then be made from the auguries associated with a certain configuration, since events taking place on some future date would be subject to the same influences as its corresponding previous cycle dates. Events and ceremonies would be timed to coincide with auspicious dates, and avoid inauspicious ones (Coe 1992, Miller and Taube 1993).
The completion of significant calendar cycles ("period endings"), such as a k'atun-cycle, were often marked by the erection and dedication of specific monuments such as twin-pyramid complexes such those in Tikal and Yaxha, but (mostly in stela inscriptions) commemorating the completion, accompanied by dedicatory ceremonies.
A cyclical interpretation is also noted in Maya creation accounts, in which the present world and the humans in it were preceded by other worlds (one to five others, depending on the tradition) which were fashioned in various forms by the gods, but subsequently destroyed. The present world also had a tenuous existence, requiring the supplication and offerings of periodic sacrifice to maintain the balance of continuing existence. Similar themes are found in the creation accounts of other Mesoamerican societies (Miller and Taube, 1993:68-71).
2012
The end of the 13th b'ak'tun is conjectured to have been of great significance to the Maya, but does not necessarily mark the end of the world according to their beliefs, but rather a new beginning or time of re-birth.
According to the Popol Vuh, a book compiling details of creation accounts known to the Quiché Maya of the colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fifth world. The Popol Vuh describes the first four creations that the gods failed in making and the creation of the successful fifth world where men were placed.
The last creation ended on a long count of 12.19.19.17.19. Another 12.19.19.17.19 will occur on December 21, 2012, and it has been discussed in many New Age articles and books that this will be the end of this creation, the next pole shift or something else entirely.
What's so unique about the Mayan calendar, among other things, is the conspicuous presence of an end date: December 21, 2012. Why the calendar ends continues to confound scholars. Indeed, it does stand to reason that perhaps a "literal" end to the calendar is meant to be taken literally.