Bob Doyle, Columnist
In the mid 1800s, European and American explorers found great ruins overrun by vegetation in the rainforests of Central America.
These were the remains of the Maya, a culture that thrived during the 1st Millennium (Classic Maya from 200 to 900 CE or AD).
The Maya were in Southeast Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Northwest Honduras and Northwest El Salvador. Around 900 AD, many of the key Mayan centers were abandoned, for reasons still unclear.
The Maya independently developed place numeration where large numbers are represented by a series of symbols in sequence, such as 123 where 3 represents 3, 2 is for a 20 and 1 is for a 100. Thus 123 = 100 + 20 + 3.
The Maya used a vigesimal or base 20 numbers. The Mayan zero is shown as a shell and the other Mayan digits (1-19) consist of dots and bars. Shorter Mayan time units include the Heavenly God Cycle of 13 days and a Uinal of 20 days.
Likely these two units led to the Tzolkin year of 13 Uinals of 260 days (13 x 20). The Tzolkin was a religious time unit based on Mayan ceremonies and prophecies. The Quiche Maya assert that this 260 day calendar is connected to the human gestation period and the time from seeding to harvesting of maize (corn).
The Haab or vague year consisted of 18 Uinals plus five unlucky days, which added up to 365 days. There was also a Tun of 360 days (18 x 20 days). A date was specified by both the day name in the Tzolkin calendar and the day name in the Haab calendar.
It would take 52 Haab years or 73 Tzolkin years before these combination of double day names would start to repeat. This period was called a calendar round. There was a belief that the gods could cause the world to come to an end at the end of a calendar round.
So on the last day of a calendar around, people of Central America would watch the Pleiades (Seven Sisters) climb to the top of the sky If the Pleiades stopped, the world would end.
To appease the gods on that evening, a captive warrior was bond with ropes to a central altar. As the midnight hour approached, the victim’s heart was quickly and skillfully cut out of his chest; then the still beating heart was held into the flame of a torch.
This sacrifice pleased the gods and the world was allowed to continue for another Calendar Round. Scholars call this the New Fire ceremony, practiced by the Maya at Chichen Itza late in the Classic period, where they had a Venus observatory.
For yet longer periods of time, the Maya used a long count or Pictun, which consist of 20 Baktuns. A Baktun consists of 20 x 20 Tuns or 144,000 days (roughly 394 of our years).
Our current world, according to the Maya began on Aug. 11, 3114 BCE. The 13th Baktun will end after 1,872,000 days or just over 5,125 solar years. This is how the date Dec. 21, 2012 was established.
In terms of astronomy, there will be no special alignments of the Earth and planets on this date. The sun will then be in Sagittarius about 3 degrees from the center of our galaxy.
So all the hype about the world ending or a new creation on 12/21/2012 has no basis in fact. Consider the Maya themselves; they believed in a flat Earth and that the sun each night went into a series of caverns inhabited by Dark Lords. To placate these beings, human sacrifices were offered to insure the sun’s successful return to the morning sky.
Why should a calendar used by an ancient culture be seen as indicating a forthcoming upheaval for which there’s no mechanism? The few practicing Maya interviewed about the 2012 issue see it as a fraud by western authors to make money.
Now featured at the Frostburg State Planetarium is “Sky Gazing with Telescopes,” show today, Nov. 15 and 29 at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. at Frostburg State Planetarium in Tawes Hall 302. Tawes Hall is near the FSU Clock Tower, the Performing Arts Center and across from the Compton Science Center.
Bob Doyle’s phone number is (301) 687-7799 and his email is rdoyle@frostburg.edu
