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 “Mayan Calendar” system that is still not commonly known, understood or has yet to be articulated. And there is an equal amount of fiction surrounding both the “Mayan calendar” and the Dec. 21, 2012 date.

The index and preliminary index found below will give you an idea of the subjects and themes to be covered in this report and in the series of reports which will follow on the “Mayan Calendar” and Dec. 21, 2012.

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. Mayan scholars are few and far between and fewer are the ones who have sensible and supportable claims to share.

Testament to the growing popular interest in 2012 is the November 11, 2009 release of a feature length film by Sony Movie Studios on the subject of the Mayan Calendar and Dec. 21, 2012

INTRODUCING THE “MAYAN CALENDAR”

AND DECEMBER 21, 2012

INDEX: After clicking on the desired topic, click on any image to return to index

• Whose Calendar? The Mayan Calendar Misnomer
• Gregorian Imprecision versus MAC perfection
  • The Astronomical
    The Astounding
    The Ultra-Mundane & Ultra-Confused
    The Power of 20
    
• Citations and References
  

Whose Calendar?

The Mayan Calendar Misnomer

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 use “the Mayan 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 this planet that 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.

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.

Mayan calendar origins

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 “Mayan Calendar” 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 s in question.[1]

The historical evidence does not support a Mayan 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 anothers 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 MAC 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)

In order to distinguish and appreciate the differences between the MAC 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 can apply to anyone anywhere on the planet regardless of beliefs. A culture specific feature is the exact opposite of a universal attribute in that the value and or meaning of the item in question is only valid within the framework of the cultural discourse.

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 Distinctions between Natural and Artificial Calendar Systems: One Enlightens; the Latter Enslaves

The Astronomical

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 numerics.

Number relationships and patterns the Maya discovered within the cycles of the celestial spheres. Number relationships and patterns that can only emerge when a whole number is used. Not to mention that a single day is the smallest whole unit of time that is not an abstaction like hours and seconds.

The answer to the question of the Western fixation with the monotony of the solar year I believe lies with the religious domain.  The Western calendar system has been since its inception the intellectual province of Western religion. And as is known 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 which undermines their authority .

The war on science began over 400 years ago with the Copernican revolution when it established the sun-centric view of the universe, but clashed with the Churches view of an earth-centric universe. [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 development would strike a death blow to the Judeo-Christian world view.  Religion is concerned with political matters. Science is interested in the most accurate understanding of nature.

Back to calendrics.

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-point 24219 days].[3]

Which 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 exact 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 we have come to know as the “Mayan calendar,” 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.

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 an alignment or conjunction which has been occurring 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 third of the 36 year transition period. 1998 was the year when the sun was central to the galactic equator. [4]

At this point I will not get into the relevance or value of measuring  astronomical alignments, cycles and other “far away” phenomenon as it relates to life on earth, but I will attest to and later demonstrate said relevance in a near future report.

The Astounding

The 260 day count Tzolkin is commonly referred to as a religious almanac.

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 also mean to 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 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 chieftan 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.

The Tzolkin is NOT a spiritual-religious almanac in the Judeo-Christian sense.

So what is the Tzolkin and how can one describe the Tzolkin so as to make it relevant and appreciable to those who might want to investigate another way of understanding our world, our selves and our place in the cosmos?

It is a question I will strive to clarify in my work as to whether the value-meaning system attributed to the Tzolkin is of universal application or just another valid way for a culture to describe their own unique place in the world.

At this point I will say that while certain non-essential features within the Maya-Meso-American Calendrical system (MAC) are culture specific--the qualities those features are intended to embody do indeed have a universal application.

Meaning, the symbols used are interchangeable so long as the qualities, meanings and dynamics are conserved.

It is the two previous statements which hold the promise of establishing MAC as a science and as a universal world view. Every religion was and is an attempt to be both.

So how can a world view devised thousands of years ago do any better when it seems that spirituality and science are two seemingly incompatible partners?

The key word is seemingly and the problem is the limited and limiting world view the West has developed and insists on passing on.

Citations and References

1. Mesoamerican Long Count calendar

2. The various ways to measure the length of the year

3. Leap years

4. Galactic Alignment

5. The War on Science

6. The Copernican Revolution

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