Why The World Won't End On 12/21/12

OK, first let me declare I cannot guarantee that the world will not end on the so-called Mayan Doomsday. But let me set out the many reasons it is highly unlikely.

1) The Mayans never predicted it. I have talked to many Mayans, including village elders and spiritual leaders. None of them find any credence to the popular excitement about Doomsday. None. To quote one Mayan elder, "This is just something that a few people have latched onto as being true, when in fact it is not".

2) Yes, the calendar seems, at first glance, to end. But if you have read this blog, you know that all the various Mayan calendars are circular in nature. A circle, no beginning, and NO END. The Mayans just anticipate the calendar rolling over again. Think of a odometer in a car, eventually, all the numbers would reset at zero. Same thing with the calendar in 2012.

3) There is NO proof that the Mayans expected the world to end next year. There are two very vague references to it in some of the writings, but VERY vague, to the point where it could be a prediction, or lyrics to the My Little Pony song. (see my blog from last October, Primary Sources).

4) There are a few predictions of things that will happen after 12/21/12 in Mayan writings. For example, on the Tablet of Inscriptions at Palenque, there is a reference to a date in October of  the year 4772 ( our calendar). If the world is done next year, it makes no sense the Maya would reference dates after the Doomsday.

5) Let's keep in mind that the Mayan Calendar is a retrofit, they chose a date in the distant pass to start it. They could have chosen other dates, there was excellent math at science at work, but not perfect. Also we are still in the early phases of translation, our interpretations could be wrong. So to point at a specific date based on the calendar seems iffy at best.

6) Think about the recent prediction by a preacher that the world would end. Think about the Y2K buzz. Think about the year 2000 panic. We all heard the stories, it was major news. Surely if the Mayans knew the world would end on 12/21/12, it would have made a great impact on the writings we do have in our possession from when the Mayan Nation was at its peak. And as  stated, there just isn't the evidence around to support it.

Naturally, all of the above has not stopped people from writing books about Doomsday, predicting dire events, and playing on the sensational to make a few dollars. I find myself in the camp of others who suggest that instead of THE END, we consider what the Maya may have anticipated, A BEGINNING. Approach that date as a date for personal growth, renewal, rebirth if you like. But don't latch onto the false claims that it will all be over next year.

J.T. Turner, Mayanist

The Long Count

Well we have had quite the tour of Mayan Calendars, but we wrap it up with this blog post. The Long Count is actually a simple idea. We simply pick a date in the distant past, and start counting the days since then. The start date is sometimes called the day of 'creation", but there does not seem to be any evidence the Mayans actually believed all creation started on that date. Rather it is just a way to keep time. Think of it rather as a starting point, like January 1st in the year 1 started the Gregorian Calendar.

Since we have a start date, we could make any date later after the start one big number. But the Mayans loved integrals of 20, and that is important to remember. Think of a cars odometer. Fresh from the factory we mights see it read 0.0.0.0.0. After it is driven for awile, it might read 6.5.4.1.2. This tell us that it has traveled 65,412 miles, or we can thing of it as 6 ten thousands, 5 thousands, 4 hundreds, 1 ten and 2 miles. So, chunks of 10's.


Well think of the Long Count as expressing the passage of time like that, but expressing it  in chunks of 1, 20, 360, 7,200 and 14,400.(More about the odd last two numbers later). So, in the Long Count, day 1 is 0.0.0.0.0. Day 2 is 0.0.0.0.1, and keeps going until the first slot hits 0.0.0.0.19. The next day, the Count is 0.0.0.1.0. The 1 tells us 20 days have passed. So a number like 0.0.0.11.14 tells us that 11 counts of 20, and 14 days have passed since the start.

OK now it gets tricky, (yeah, I know its already tricky, just stay with me). You see the second slot, rather than going to a maximum of 19, only goes to 17. (remember, we count the 0 as a day, so this reflects 18 days, though it says 17). This is so the third slot reflects almost a year, 360 days. So a number of 0.0.1.0.0 shows us 360 days have gone by. the next two slots show multiples of twenty, so if we look at the numkbers in order we see how many single days up to 19, how many 20 day sets up to 360, how many 360 day sets up to 7,200, (that is 20 X 360), and how many sets of 144,000 (20 X 7,200).

Each slot has a name, listed below.






Or we can put the name in the proper slot on our Mayan odometer:




To break it down a bit more:

20 kins	equal	1 uinal or 20 days
18 uinals	equal	1 tun or 360 days
20 tuns	equal	1 katun or 7,200 days
20 katuns	equal	1 baktun or 144,000 days

Got all that? OK, now many scientists have tried to figure out just what start date this calendar used. There are several theories, but most scientists now lean to the ancient starting date of the Long Count as being August 14, 3114 BC, or to be politically correct, BCE (Before Common Era).But some say it was August 13, some August 11, and some September 6. These are supported by some astronomical events that the Long Count dates were given on artifacts.

Next time, why we will be fine on Doomsday!

J.T. Turner, Mayanist

The Lords of the Night

OK so we have touched on the Tzolkin and Haab calendars. Before we get to the Long Count calendar, (which is the last one, aren't you glad?), let's touch upon the Lords of the Night.

Simply, every day is associated with a creature known as a Lord of the Night. there are nine Lords, and they take turns watching over the days. You will recall the Mayans are all about cycles, so these nine Lords work in a rotation. Yes, that means we have yet another cycle in the Mayan time keeping world.

We do not have names for the Lords of the Night, those have been lost over the years. But we do have glyphs of each of them, and scholars simple have called them G1-G9. (Not to be confused with the Aztec Nine lords of the Night, which have names). Collectively they are known as bolon ti ku, "Nine of them".









Attractive, no? So the Lords of the night simply run in order for nine days and then restart.

And now we will wrap up our calendar discussion with the Long Count next blog.

                                           J.T. Turner
                                            Mayanist

The Tzolkin Calendar

After a long hiatus, we are back to blogging! We are looking at the various Mayan calendars, their purpose and use. We took a look at the Haab, now lets consider the Tzolkin.

The Tzolkin is really two independant calendars that run side by side. the first cycle is  one of 13 days, numbered 1-13. The other cycle is 20 days, each day has a name of its own.( Think of our calendar, Monday Tuesday Wednesday, that is similar to the 20 day calendar). Each day, both the 13 day calendar and the 20 day calendat advance by one. If it were Monday March 5th, and we already knew it was march, we might say Monday the 5th or Monday 5. Then Tuesday 6, Wednesday 7 and so on. For the Mayans the number part went to 13 and restarted, the name of the day went thru the list of 20 and then restarts.

Hopefully you can count to 13, so you get that part of the calendar. We will call that part of the calendar tones. The names of days are below with the rough translation of the word.
  Imix-crocodile
 Ik-wind
 Akbal-night
Kan-seed
 Chikchan-sperpent
Kimi-transformation
Manik-deer
Lamat-star
Muluk-offering
Ok-dog
 Chuen-monkey
 Eb-road
 Ben-read
 Ix-jaguar
 Men-eagle
 Kib-wisdom
 Kaban-earth
 Etznab-flint
 Kawak-storm
 and Ahau- sun. 









Now lets get a quick visual as to how these two cycles work together.











Look at the tones, and you will see the Mayan representation for numbers we have discusses. One dot for one, two for two, etc. Then a bar represents 5, 2 bars is ten. Using those combinations, we see the inner circle that goes up to 13.


So if we started at 1 Imix, that would show the first number and the Name of the first day. It would then run through the cycle, with the numbers turning over at 13 and the names turning over after Ahau. If we continued on in that fashion, it would take 260 days for the calendar to get all the way back to the start of 1 Imix. In some illustrations, the days are called kin, so in the illustration above, we see the wheels for 260 kin or days.

OK so that is 2 major calendars out of the way. Before we get to the Long Count, we will visit a method or practice of the Mayans involving assigning a creature to each day. So, next up, Lord of the Night!


J.T. Turner, Mayanist