2012
Written by Rohaan Solare on Thursday, April 23, 2009 10:05 - 13 Comments
The Mayan Calendar and Dec. 21, 2012: The Facts, the Fiction and the Marvels
Dear reader if you are encountering Maya calendric and 2012 information for the first time on my website then I am going to recommend a more introductory article on the nature of Maya Calendrics and the 2012 phenomena. Please see On the Trail of the Super Organism, The Question of 2012 and the the Marvel of Maya Calendrics
The web is abuzz with the little understood, but much talked about “Mayan Calendar” and the date of Dec. 21, 2012. The most commonly touted virtue of the Mayan Calendar now sounds like a well worn cliche´ “the Mayan Calendar is more accurate than our own”.
That is true, but there are volumes more to the Maya Calendrical system that is still not commonly known, understood or has yet to be articulated. And there is an equal amount of fiction surrounding the Mayan calendar and the Dec. 21, 2012 date.
Many fantastic claims have been made about the Dec. 21, 2012 date and most of those claims fall into the categories of being either unsupported, unintelligible gibberish or sheer nonsense. Maya scholars are few and far between and fewer are the ones who have sensible and supportable claims to share.
Whose Calendar?
The Mayan Calendar Misnomer
NOT THE MAYA CALENDAR, but the Aztec Stone Calendar. A search for Mayan calendar Images turns up page after page of Aztec stone calendar images and none of the famous "Mayan calendar".
A little background about the Mayan Calendar. First off the Mayan Calendar is no more Maya than the science of genetics is American.
The Maya were not the first culture of Mexico to develop the calendar they have become famous for. The Olmecs, the mother culture of Mexico, who predate the Maya civilization are known to have made calendrical engravings similar to those of the Maya.[1]
When referring to the Mayan Calendar most people knowingly or unknowingly are referring to what is known as the Long Count, which is a measure 1,872,000 days long or 5125.2661 years. Dec. 21, 2012 is the day the Long Count cycle ends and a new cycle of the same duration begins.[1]
Pretty tame stuff were it not for the fact that this date coincides with a time when there are almost 7 billion people on planet earth who are guided by a leadership hell bent on doing business as usual, despite the indisputable evidence that drastic changes in the governmental administration of social, economic and industrial domains are mandated by the conditions the citizens and denizens of planet earth find themselves in.
Parts of the "Mayan calendar". The glyphs or symbols of the 20 day signs. Not too exciting compared to doomsday scenarios. I'll get to the really exciting stuff soon.
The Leadership, could care less about what is happening to the vast majority of people, our plant life, animal life and the continued and needless contamination of our food, air and water.
Fortunately, the people are growing more unsure every day and governments around the world are beginning to fall due to popular demand for government reform.
So what do social conditions on planet Earth have to do with Dec. 21, 2012 and the Mayan Calendar?
It is not a straight forward kind of relationship I can explain in a paragraph or two and the picture is made murkier by the multitude of misunderstandings surrounding the calendar science of the pre-columbian inhabitants of present day Mexico and Central America.
In a series of articles under the master heading of the Art and Science of Synchronicity I begin to relate how the Maya Calendrical system is capable of predicting the thematic content of a given time period but does make claims about specific events
Mayan Calendar origins
"Part of Mayan Calendar" La Mojarra Stela with Long date inscript. The left column gives a Long Count date of 8.5.16.9.7, or 156 CE. CE stand for Current Era or 156 AD. Research is dry stuff, but somebody has to do it.
The geographical location of stone monuments (stelae or stela) with engraved Long Count dates has lead researchers to surmise that the Long Count predates the Maya civilization. [1]
The other lesser known and even more misunderstood component of the Maya Calendrical system is the Tzolkin.
The Tzolkin refers to a cycle 260 days long. Tzolkin is Mayan for count or sequence of days, but as with the Long count the origins of the 260 day count is in question.[1]
The historical evidence does not support a Maya genesis for any part of the calendar system of Mesoamerica.
The Maya culture was the grandest and most widespread of all Mesoamerican cultures and it can be said that they did develop Mesoamerican calender science to its highest degree.
The Mayan Calendar was used throughout Mesoamerica (Mexico-Central America) by other major and minor city-states such the Aztecs, Toltecs and Mixtec cultures to name a few.
Mexico was comprised of over 80 different tribes and city-states when the Spanish arrived in the early 1500′s
So much for the Mayan Calendar. Bastardization of knowledge and cultural pollution happens when popularizers (certain writers & most movie makers) and merchants (book, trinket and t-shirt sellers) get a hold of a cultural artefact they believe has market potential.
Researcher accuracy and respect for another’s culture loses out to catchy marketing, sexy sales pitches and wanton commercialization.
A more precise term for the Mayan Calendar would be Maya-Meso-American Calendrics or MMAC for short.
This new term would properly label the calendrical science used by the various cultures of Mesoamerica and it would also give credit to the Maya culture who did indeed develop the science of general calendrics to its greatest degree.
Gregorian Imprecision versus MAC perfection.
The Astronomical, the Astounding and the Mundane Functions of Calendars.
A very short primer contrasting Western and Maya-Meso-American Calendrics (MAC)
Detail of the tomb of Pope Gregory XIII celebrating the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.
In order to distinguish and appreciate the differences between the MMAC system and the Western system of time keeping I will make a brief, but telling comparison.
I will differentiate between the universal attributes and the culture specific features of both calendar systems.
A universal attribute will apply to anyone anywhere on the planet regardless of beliefs. A culture specific feature has value and/or meaning only within the framework of the cultural discourse in question.
This section is not intended to be an exhaustive breakdown comparison between Western and Mesoamerican calendar systems. For a more detailed analysis of Western and Meso-American calendrics please see
The Astronomical
Whirlpool Galaxy Courtesy of the Hubble site
A couple of questions I have not heard asked regarding Mesoamerican calendrics—is why did the Meso-Americans prefer to count by days and why is Western calendrics in such an impoverished state by comparison.
I believe the answer to the first question lies in the precision afforded by a day counting system in which messy fractions are eliminated and the discovery of nested numerical constants.
Number relationships and patterns the Maya discovered within the cycles of the celestial spheres. Number relationships and patterns that become evident when a whole numbers are used. Not to mention that a single day is the smallest whole unit of natural time.
The answer to the question of Western fixation with the monotony of the solar year I believe lies with the religious domain. The Western calendar system has been the intellectual province of Western religion. And as we know, religion is an irrational and ultra-conservative ideology.
Scientific investigation updates it ideas about nature as new information comes in. Conservative ideologies ignore and will attempt to discredit information undermining their authority.
The war on science began over 400 years ago when the Copernican revolution established the sun-centric view of the universe, but clashed with the Churches earth-centric view. [6] The current and most intense conflict between science and religion is the debate over evolution.[5]
The science of evolution strikes at the heart of Western religious doctrine. The Church insists their “God” created the world. The Church’s acceptance of the scientific explanation of life’s development would strike a death blow to the Judeo-Christian world view. Religion is concerned with socio-political matters. Science is interested in the most accurate understanding of nature.
Back to calendrics.
Precession of the equinoxes Diagram by Nick Anthony Fiorenza
Western calendrics uses at least 4 “ultra-precise” measurements to establish the length of a solar year.
The numbers range from 365.24219 to 365.2564 days long. Not much difference, but enough to complicate matters.[2]
To demonstrate the imprecision of using years to track long periods of time I present the following example
I will use the first number of 365.24219 which is the measure of a tropical year and is the most common figure used to calculate the length of a solar year.
In order for the solar cycle to synchronize with a human solar calendar we must periodically make an adjustment every 4 years by adding a day–leap year and every 128 years we must subtract a day and the math work does not end there.
The leap year measure does not solve the messy fraction problem because the tropical solar year is shy 11 minutes 14 seconds of an exact 1/4 day.[365.24219 days].[3]
That means that every 4 years the 365 day Gregorian calendar is off by 44.93 minutes. It will be necessary to subtract a day every 128.189 years so the solar cycle once again synchronizes with any human made 365 day calendar.
Please note that even the subtraction of a day every 128 years still leaves another pesky fraction which must be accounted for in the future. Counting by years is simply an imprecise way of tracking time. Tracking by days solves the problem.
There are many references on the web with regards to the various ways one can calculate the years length and there is also quite a bit of variance in the numbers calculated and standards used. Whatever the exact calculations may be it is clear that counting by years is not the most precise way of counting accurately into the past or into the future.
Mayan Calendar counting perfection
| Mayan Time Bundles | Days | Tzolkin cycles | Years | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kin | =1 | |||
| 1Uinal | = 20 Kin | =20 | ||
| 1Tun | = 18 Uinal | =360 | ||
| 13 Tun | =4680 | =18 | =12.8134 | |
| 1-Katun | = 20 Tun | =7200 | ||
| 13-katun | =93,600 | =360 | =256.26 | |
| 1-Baktun | = 20 Katun | =144000 | =394.2589 | |
| 13-Baktun | =1-Great-Cycle | =1,872,000 | =7200 | =5125.3661 |
| 65-Baktun | = Galactic year | =9,360,000 | =36,000 | =25,626.83 |
Early astronomy was primarily concerned the position of our earth in space relative to other bodies in space (positional astronomics). Early astronomers found a regularity and periodicity to the movement of Earth and other celestial bodies.
The moon, sun, planets and the constellations move about and changed position in our sky, but they would “always come back” to their former position in the sky with precise regularity.
The moon has its “monthly” cycle. The earth has its 24 hour night-day cycle and its 365.24219 day yearly cycle.
The constellations have a 25,000+ year precesssional cycle. It was the Mesoamerican fascination with positional astronomics that led them to discover the very interesting and telling numerical relationships (nested numerics) between the various cycles.
Their discoveries enabled them to devise the system known as the Maya calendrical system, which in reality is a multitude of calendars.
Each specific kind of heavenly body tracking can be referred to as X calendar. One can track the cycles of the moon (moon calendar), venus (venus calendar) or the constellations (precesssional calendar). The Gregorian calendar’s (named after Pope Gregory) primary astronomical function is to track our yearly trip around the sun and to maintain the authority of “the Church”.
The Gregorian calendar’s (GC) primary value lies in its function as religious-secular day marker and as such reflects the cultural peculiarities (tax, election, president and holi-days etc) of the culture which fashioned it. Apart from the tracking of the solar cycle the GC is first and foremost a marker for culture specific meanings, values and occasions.
The days it marks have no meaning or significance to those outside the culture. Christmas and Easter are significant only if one believes in the cultural meaning of those dates. In contrast the Equinox and Solstice points are of universal value since everyone experiences both events whether one is aware or not.
On the other hand Maya-Meso-American Calendrics is in my assessment a system with universal application. Astronomically I have already mentioned the solstice and equinox.
The Mesoamericans tracked other planetary cycles of the solar system, the night sky and the earths solar orbit. They were particularly fond of the Venus cycle and they were capable of predicting eclipses.
One view of Galactic alignment 2012
The Tzolkin was the calendar component used to calculate eclipses. The Long Count cycle is related to our solar systems
orientation with respect to the galactic center.
The most significant astronomical aspect of 2012 is a conjunction between the sun and the approximate galactic center.
It takes 36 years for the sun to traverse the 1 degree wide galactic equator. Dec. 21, 2012 marks the end date of a 5125.26 year cycle and the last 4 years of the 36 year transition period. 1998 was the year when the sun was central to the galactic equator. [4]
The Astounding
The 260 day count Tzolkin is commonly referred to as a religious almanac.
The 26O day Tzolkin Code Chart. Parts 2 and 5 of the Science of Synchronicity begin the decoding portion of my work related to just what the Tzolkin is and how it relates to other branches of established scientific knowledge.
Is the Tzolkin a spiritual-religious almanac?
Again we have the problem of Western ideas superimposed upon a culture who developed an entirely different world view.
You will often hear academics refer to Tzolkin as the Maya “sacred calendar”. Some of the greatest challenges confronting and clouding the understanding of Mesoamerican cultures or any other cultures for that matters are the Western worlds conceptions of religion and spirituality.
One of my efforts is to strip away the Wests conceptual impositions of what religiosity must have meant to pre-colonial Mesoamerican cultures.
One will find Western references to the Tzolkin in which Western slash Christian notions of “deities” spirits or “patron saints” are used when referring to the Tzolkin day names and/or their meanings.
The 20 named days of the Tzolkin have nothing to do with spirits or dieties and much less saints. They are named after elements of nature such as animals, plants and natural phenomena such as death, birth, wind and earthquake.
As with most nature based worldviews certain elements of our natural world are selected for their exemplary embodiment of particular qualities which are found to permeate life from top to bottom and can therefore be characterized as universal attributes of our world.
We also see a spectrum wide inclusion of natural elements in the makeup of Tzolkin’s mytho-symbolism, i.e., animals, plants and natural phenomena.
One can refer to such a system as a whole systems model if it is capable of accounting for all of the components and dynamisms it is intended to reflect in its categorization and order sequence modeling.
The Ultra-Mundane and Ultra-Confused
The Christian-Roman Pagan-Greek-Gregorian calendar system is a fabulous example of what is NOT a whole systems model.
The Gregorian calendar(GC) came about by the “unholy” and disordered fusion of Romano-Pagan calendar ideas and the “Christian worldview“. The names of the months no longer correspond to the ten month system used by the Pagan Romans. 
December was the 10th month and now is the 12th. November was the 9th month and now it’s the 11th.
October was the 8th and is now the 10th. September was the 7th and is now the 9th. August was the name of a Roman Emperor as is July–short for Julius.
June is from Juno a goddess in Roman mythology. May is from Maia the Roman goddess of Spring. April stands for Aphrodite a Greek goddess.
March stands for Mars the Roman god of war. February stands for Februa the Roman festival of purification. January stands for Janus the Roman god of gates and doorways.
To top it off the months are arbitrarily assigned an uneven number of days. Moon cycles are always the same number of days. Months and moons share the same root meaning.
Truly the GC is a culture specific hodge podge of erroneous nomenclature (Roman names of months), imprecision (frequent adjustments & uneven months) religiosity, commercialized religio-secularism and secular lawfulness.
Christian ideas of “patron saint of the day” or the “calendar of saints’ has to do with either historical or mythological male figures who represent only one half of life’s equation–the masculine half.
Every day of the GC has one or more patron saint and as we know “only men can achieve saintliness in the Western world”. Therefore, everyday of the GC is embodied by a male figure.
The Judeo-Christian-Islamic world view has attempted and succeeded for most of its 5000 year history to render women completely impotent. Not only is the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world view slanted towards all things male, but there are no other elements used in its cosmology to embody the many other qualities of life.
Masculinity is the measure of all things according to the Western world.
There are no plants, animals or forces of nature to be seen in the iconography of Western mytho-symbolic ideations. I forget–there are many sheep, some fish, bread and a little wine.
The Power of Twenty
In contrast, the 20 elements of the Tzolkin have equal place, stature and respect. A community of twenty is used to tell the story of life’s unfolding. Which is to say “it takes a village”, not a priest or Vatican mandate to tell the story of life.
It also says the “lungs are not more important than the heart” nor the left hand more important than the right, etc. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic system is clearly saying the penis is vastly more important than the vagina and anything else in existence for that matter.
The Tzolkin on the other hand is a perfect balance of male and feminine qualities. 10 of the elements can be be said to be “more masculine” traits and the other 10 can be said to “more feminine”
The 20 named days of the Tzolkin repeat 13 times to gives us the 260 day count. 13 x 20=260
It is too early at this introductory stage to start talking about the specific nuts and bolts of the Maya-Meso-American Calendrical system. It will take several reports just to convey all the inner workings of the Tzolkin in specific detail.
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Citations and References
1. Mesoamerican Long Count calendar
2. The various ways to measure the length of the year
3. Leap years
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Interesting project you are running here examining the core of the Meso-American calendar systems. This is pretty well done. Compared to most sites that tackle the calendar system these days I would have to say it is certainly above average. That said I think we all know the average itself is not great. Though I run a 2012 site and deal with calendar related subjects I avoid explaining the full system as quite frankly I am still studying it in my own time and not at a point where I could confidently explain it in depth to others. You are brave I will give you that.
There are some errors and if you do not mind I will just quickly share the ones I spotted, you may decide to dismiss them. The correct term is ‘Maya’ not ‘Mayan’ when talking about the calendar, people or civilisation. Mayan is just the language group.
You mention a galactic alignment between Earth, Sun and Galactic Centre for 21-12-2012 yet myself and several other 2012 researchers have all concluded this is an error and are updating our sites to reflect this. Firstly the correct term is conjunction and it is a vague happening at best. We know that the most excepted theory by scientists and mathematicians is that the sun was most conjunct with Galactic equator during the winter solstice of 1998/99. The area referred to as galactic centre is huge and can’t be considered as a special factor in such conjunctions as this could be said otherwise to occur for hundreds of winter solstice in our era. Even if we take the galactic equator as the important position this to is a problem as we don’t know the Maya ever made such a distinction to that region. As one Maya Anthropologist and Meso-American calendar expert summarised it for me: “The best that we can say is that on 21-12-2012 the winter solstice sun will be conjunct with the edge of one part of the great rift in the approx central region of the Milky Way.”
I also think you will struggle to show that the Maya calendar systems are merely a repackaged version of the Olmec system in the manner you seem to describe. The available evidence shows the Olmec had a far more basic system with the importance put on a 360 day year and a 52 year cycle. I think to say that the Maya just took the calendar system from the Olmec can’t be proved by the evidence available (even if both you and I sense that to be true). On the face of the evidence it is more like a Maya scholar saw an Olmec with a horse and cart and went away and built a Ferrari.
I look forward to your upcoming articles and it is good to see a site that deals more with the actual calendar rather than just 2012 prophecy theories, which are all to common.
By the way I think you misunderstood the three part series I wrote on the 2012 date. I was actually showing how there is in fact no such thing as a Maya doomsday prophecy and no compelling evidence for catastrophe at the end of previous 13 Baktun cycles. The third part was not my opinion on what the Maya predicted for 2012, as you assumed, but rather simply a what might happen around the year 2012 which ‘could possibly’ relate to the calendar finishing. I certainly do not say there is any good evidence (yet) the Maya predicted solar or cosmic storms for 21-12-2012. I do appreciate that is perhaps not at first obvious so feel free to have another read through. Thanks for the analysis though I always love feedback, critical or positive. It is how we all advance!
Kind regards
Bruce Fenton
2012Rising.com
I look forward to talking more and wonder if you are on Facebook?
Anyway I have added this Blog page to StumbleUpon to draw more people to your project.
All the best
Bruce
@Bruce
Thanks for heads up of the subtle difference between Maya and Mayan when making the distinctions you mention. At this point I’m not sure if I should make the correction due to search engine and search query rankings considerations. 99.9% of the public will use the term Mayan. Any suggestions?
Alignment vs Conjunction
John Major Jenkins does use the term alignment in his work. A dictionary review uses the word alignment to describe conjunction.
What is the difference between alignment and a conjunction from your understanding?
I agree with what you have to say about the aspects concerning the questions of precision involving the “conjunction/alignment” of our solstice sun with the approximate center of the galaxy.
There must be other astronomical features yet to be discovered to help explain the Maya’s astronomical pinpointing of the Dec. 21 date.
Jenkins seem pretty confident with his explanation concerning the “vagueness”of the “conjunction/alignment” I must admit that the astronomical aspects concerning 2012 “conjunction/alignment” is the least investigated portion of my work. I am relying on the current expert (Jenkins) in that dept.—for what I have to say about it.
Regarding your statement about my efforts to show that the “Maya calendar system is merely a repacked version of the Olmec system”
I do not state nor do I imply that anywhere in my report. I simply state that the Olmec civilization predates the Maya and that the archeological record left by the Olmecs indicates they had knowledge of the 260 day Tzolkin the core of MAC calendrics and that they were also tracking the Long Count. Tracking the Long Count implies an equal understanding of cycles at least 5125 years long. We attribute more to the Maya because they left far more record and evidence. My point was not to show that the Maya system was a “repackaged” version of the Olmec system, but to say that the “Maya Calender” is a misnomer. Since it is unclear just who discovered the 260 Tzolkin and who set the Long Count. We only know for sure that the older Olmec civilization did leave a record of their knowledge of the Tzolkin and the Long Count.
Due to the uncertainty of just who discovered “what” and “when” is the reason I suggested the scholarship consider using the term Maya-Mesoamerican-Calendrics (MAC) to add further precision to the study of Mesoamerican calendrics while recognizing the culture most responsible for its continued development and refinement.
And you are right about the last part of your comment. We are both in agreement about the popularized misinformation and sensationalized false prophetic aspects of Maya’s mytho-symbolic lore.
I do appreciate what you are saying and I suppose it may be wise to use the term ‘Mayan’ for full titles and the url’s so that search engines can easily find you in relevant searches. I feel the same problem exists for the ‘Galactic Alignment’. As I understand the terms this refers to three celestial objects in alignment, whilst Galactic Conjunction is an alignment of two bodies as seen from the Earth. For example when three other planets are in alignment it would not be effected by your location whether you are on the Moon or on the Earth. The three planets would still be aligned. If however the alignment of the Sun and the other object is only happening from the perspective of the Earth it is then a Conjunction. This is the case for 2012 date.
That said most people will search for ‘Galactic Alignment’.
Apologies for my thoughts taking some of your writing on the Olmec out of context in regards to my reply. I think that overall it is beneficial to use the term Meso-American calendar system. Although some of the calendars referred to on-line such as the Haab or Venus-Sun calendars do ‘seem’ to be uniquely Maya . As you rightly clarify it is however difficult to be 100% sure even of these common beliefs.
I think many people suspect the knowledge that the Maya held had existed in even more ancient times than theirs.
I think that now the water of 2012 has begun to settle many will lose interest in it as they realise much of what they thought they knew about it is wrong. It is ironic that the more the answers discount a fixed doomsday prophecy the less interest. So many people are only interested in 2012 due the false data. My concern is that by the time the greaters secrets and truths are freely revealed a lot fewer people will be listening.
I hope that I am wrong.
Thanks for the reply
Bruce
Hi, Rohaan,
I agree with you that there is a lot of misinformation out there about MY2K. But, actually, I think that makes it even more fun – our modern ‘myths’ will be as important in this as the Maya myths. Fascinating, isn’t it?
Rohaan
Hello Susan,
I wish I could it view as “fun”. I see oceans of confusion. I just put out my first article on mythic deconstruction using the Biblical myth of the Fall of Man. You might have viewed my deconstruction of prophecy which is of course rooted in myth. Ancient symbolism and modern literalism is a volatile concoction and then throw in the 12 blind men feeling out the elephant and you have a full blown circus.
The 12 blind men are the popularizers with no understanding of mytho-symbolism. The elephant is the Mayan calendar and the 2012 event. I don’t presume to know how this is all going to shape up, but I can least keep my head above water or so I like to think. The positivist crowd has got it right thematically–a regenerative event. The looming question is one of scale and magnitude.
Cindy
This is the first clear understanding I have had of the basis for your theories.
I look forward to further primers. Thanks
Jeanna
Thanks for putting this out so clearly. I’ve read other sites and just got confused. This explains things so well, glad I found you. Looking forward to more.x
Rohaan,
This is a follow-up to our previous conversations and in it I will address not only this article but several other related ones that I have read on your site.
Honestly, I like most of what you’re saying here. I completely agree that there is no need to hype up an ‘end of the world’ since we are already in a state of crisis and that the rest is a sensationalist ruse to distract us from the issues at hand.
However, there is one major matter on which I must diverge: the non-existence of Mayan prophecy. As I have previously related, most ancient Mayan literature was burned by an ignoramus Catholic priest. Nevertheless, the oral tradition carried on in various ancestral dialects continues unimpeded to this very day so can I assure you that the Maya are alive and well, having much to say concerning their own “professions of faith”. For example, the ‘decline’ of city-dwelling Maya and the abandonment of key urban centers has long baffled Western scholars. But you better than anyone should be able to understand that the Maya foresaw the arrival of conquerors and that they voluntarily went into hiding deep in the jungles and high in the mountains of the Yucatan centuries before Europeans arrived. They have remained there in relative seclusion (barring of course, certain public scuffles like the widely publicized Zapatista uprising of the mid-90′s) up to the present.
As I understand it you are familiar with the prophecy of 13 Heavens and Nine Hells but could not track its source. This is a common prophecy known all throughout Latin America even by common folk. In Spanish it is called “The long night of 500 years” because it basically states that our people would be subjugated by foreign invaders for such a span as to atone for the sins of our bloodthirsty forebears. In other words, we have been patiently biding our time and continue to do so until conditions are ripe to reassert our ascendancy as true Toltec descendants. More recently, the Mayan elders have started to come forward to reveal wisdom normally withheld from those who would corrupt or destroy it.
Toltec in Nahuatl basically means “Artisan” and the factuality of their existence as a civilization is also hotly debated within academic circles. Insofar as the Olmecs and the long-count are concerned, a leading scholar says:
“The Long Count calendar used by many subsequent Mesoamerican civilizations, as well as the concept of zero, may have been devised by the Olmecs. Because the six artifacts with the earliest Long Count calendar dates were all discovered outside the immediate Maya homeland, it is likely that this calendar predated the Maya and was possibly the invention of the Olmecs. Indeed, three of these six artifacts were found within the Olmec heartland. But an argument against an Olmec origin is the fact that the Olmec civilization had ended by the 4th century BCE, several centuries before the earliest known Long Count date artifact.” Diehl, Richard (2004). The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization. Ancient peoples and places series.
In either case, it matters not, the Olmecs were obviously “Artisans” of the highest order. I have also noticed that they dwelt not far from the Eastern coast. The elders say that the Toltecs themselves were descended from Atlantis (after all, Atl means “water” in Nahuatl). There are some by the wayside theorists who have put forward that much of the ancient world was populated by a sea-faring people that predates known records but who left behind many stone monuments that accurately marked the equinoxes and solstices. Thus, we Mesoamericans emphatically reject the Bering Strait theory of our origins. Actually, I really think you should take a look at these videos because they raise a lot of interesting questions pertaining to that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU557btZRg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNNBA9YEMAg
Basically, what I am getting at, is that nobody is better predisposed to understand or deliberate on the Tzolkin than the people who developed and refined it (heck, this isn’t even the only calendar still being utilized). For all your wisdom my friend (and it is genuine wisdom), I am sad to say that your approach strikes me as typically Eurocentric – divorcing the product from its producers. But if you believe in the Archaic Revival as I do then you should accept that when everything comes around full circle, it is the most primitivistic cultures that will have to be consulted for their timeless insights. When I say that I believe in Quetzalcoatl’s return, that is undoubtedly me professing personal a faith (just as Christians profess faith in Jesus’ return). Although there is one important difference: I do not take that prophecy at its literal, face-value either. The Feathered Serpent of Toltec myth represents (among other things) the union of the primeval reptilian mindset with an ethereal spirituality. We will see this happen within our lifetime and I hope we can work together to spread such awareness.
- ItzQuauhtli, Herald of Quetzalcoatl
Re: Olmec Culture
Research concurs with what you say about Olmec import to Meso-American culture and calendrics.
I will add that there is no question in my mind about the African origins of Olmec Culture and there is no question about Asian and Polynesian influence in the Americas as well. In Copan, Honduras I noticed that the statues looked exactly like Japanese Samurai—attire and facial features. And the Asiatic features of North, Meso and South Americans is also unmistakable. Genetic tests have confirmed the ethnic origins all Native Americans.
Re: Prophecy
My point regarding prophecy is that we do not have anything in writing to substantiate claims of prophecy. Books have been written about the subject yet there is not a shred of text or glyph inscribed anywhere that we may construe as prophetic text as it relates to 2012 or any other time. Please see Prophecy Demystified: The Non-Existent “Mayan Prophecies”and the Real Meaning of Prophecy” for details. It would be speculation to say what the Maya foresaw. Since we do not have any evidence to that effect.
Maya civilizational collapse was likely brought about the sheer force of self-organizing criticality. All systems are subject to it. And it simply means that any system by virtue of sheer growth will reach points where they become unstable and then must reorganize at either at a more complex scale of organization or at a simpler scale of organization. By many indications it seems that the Maya civilizational model maximized its potential and thus began a period of decline (reorganization) into simplification.
Re: Eurocentric
I am not sure why you say Eurocentric because if you are familiar with my writings you would know that I am quite critical of Euro-American cultural smugness.
I have no doubt that a present day Maya day keeper would be adept at articulating the Tzolkin according to his or her understanding. It would be sheer prejudice to say though that “nobody would be better predisposed to deliberate” on the Tzolkin than a Maya. That is like saying that an American electrical engineer would be better at articulating and understanding electrical theory because Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison were Americans.
Re: Product and producer.
To say “product and producers” is to misunderstand what the Tzolkin is. The Tzolkin is not a product (invention), but rather the discovery of a natural phenomena such as electricity. As a natural phenomena the only thing that maybe rightfully claimed is who discovered it and what the discovers had to say about it. But that by no means says that they have the final word.
I consider my work to be groundbreaking and I am only blowing some of the dust off the surface. I will devote my entire life to reveal what I can about the Tzolkin and its implications/applications and I will have only scratched the surface. I have given credit were is credit is due. I refer to their work as the Maya-Meso-American Calendrical System. The Universe is open source is it not?
Rohaan,
My apologies, I did not mean to come off so pedantic. As in the case of poetry, I am only playing devil’s advocate here by letting you know that there is still an active body of Mesoamericans involved with calendrics. Having been acculturated in Latin-America, I can’t help thinking that certain aspects of Mayan prophecy are intuitively self-evident and require little in the way of substantive proof. Other than that, I am a beaming fan of your work and am actually very interested in learning more about your discoveries because they definitely do sound groundbreaking. I look forward to the second part of Down the Rabbit Holographic!
- ItzQuauhtli
No apologies necessary. I do not mind being critiqued as it helps me sharpen my machete.
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Wow, this is such a clearly laid out presentation of MAC and brings the wisdom of cosmic principles into the light of day. Thank you for being a voice in the wilderness.