Re: calendars (was: samhain?)

Mark J. Reed wrote at 2004-11-05 00:00:58 (-0500)
 > On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 06:52:13PM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
 > > Yep - the Jewish calendar is certainly more interesting than the
 > > Gregorian.  The Mayan calendar is even better :)
 >
 > Yeah, but calendars with a built-in expiration date make me nervous. :)
 >
 > (According to the Mayan long count, the end of the world - to be
 > followed by the birth of a brand new one - will take place on Dec
 > 21, 2012.  So we only have a little over 8 years to prepare. :))
 >

That's not true.  Or, at least, it's only one possible interpretation,
and not the one held by the actual Mayanists I've read.

As I'm sure we're all aware, the Long Count gives the number of days
elapsed since a zero date in mainly base-20 units.  These are:

1  day		kin
20 kins		uinal
18 uinals	tun (a 360-day "year")
20 tuns		katun
20 katuns	baktun  ... and so on, but given the actual length of
			    historical time inhabited by the Maya, you
			    don't generally need the higher units.

The modern format for representing Long Count dates is to seperate the
numbers with periods, most significant first.  Now, the zero day of
this calendar is August 13, 3114 B.C. (by the best correlation we
have).  The weird thing, and the thing which is responsible for this
"end of the world" theory, is that the Maya didn't write this

0.0.0.0.0

but

13.0.0.0.0

That 13 seems to be functionally zero.  144,000 days later,
13.19.19.17.19 was succeeded by 1.0.0.0.0, and from there onwards
things proceed much as you'd expect.

We are currently living in the 13th baktun, which will be completed on
2012-12-23.  On that day the long count will again read 13.0.0.0.0.
The big question is whether the world is supposed to end and be
recreated then, and whether the baktun after that is 1, again, or 14.
The late Linda Schele, one of the foremost mayanists of her
generation, certainly believed that the baktun cycle was vigesimal
(like all the other cycles in the Long Count except the uinal) and
that the Maya did not expect the world to end in 2012.  There are a
number of pieces of evidence for this view:

 | On three stelae at Coba, the zero date is recorded with Long Counts
 | that include twenty cycles above the katun, each prefixed by the
 | number thirteen.  We write this number in our transcription system:
 |
 | 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0
 |
 | At Yaxchilan, there is another Long Count date corresponding to the
 | day 9.15.13.6.9 3 Muluc 17 Mac, or October 21, A.D. 744.  The date
 | is a standard Long Count, one within Bird Jaguar's life, but it is
 | written in a very special way, with eight cycles above the baktun,
 | each prefixed by the number 13 as follows:
 |
 | 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.9.15.13.6.9 3 Muluc 17 Mac
 |
 | This number is not a Distance Number between two dates; it simply
 | records that for this date, as for all dates in Maya history, the
 | cycles above the baktun are set at thirteen.  On this Yaxchilan
 | date those higher cycles had not yet changed, because not enough
 | days had accumulated to cause the odometer of time to click over to
 | the next number.  At Palenque, we learn one more fact.  In the
 | Temple of Inscriptions, Pacal tied his accession date by Distance
 | Number to the end of the first pictun, the next higher unit after
 | baktun, in the Long Count system.  This calculation tells us two
 | important facts: it takes twenty baktuns to make a pictun (or 8,000
 | years), and the number that follows thirteen in the system is one.
 |
 | ...
 |
 | The numbers in the Coba date do not mean that on 4 Ahau 8 Cumku
 | [the zero date], thirteen of each of the Long Count units had been
 | completed.  It is clear from the arithmetical operations in Maya
 | inscriptions that the thirteens are functionally zero.  They set
 | the syppetry of this universe to replicate the Tzolkin; there are
 | twenty cycles set at thirteen, just as there are twenty day names
 | and thirteen numbers in the Tzolkin.  We simply do not know how
 | much time the Maya perceived to have been encompassed by the
 | previous era.
   (From _The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art_ by Linda
    Schele and Mary Ellen Miller)

The alternative interpretation, that there is a cycle of 13 baktuns at
the end of which the world is destroyed and recreated, is popular with
kooks on the Internet.  What the prevailing view is among serious
mayanists at the present time I have not been able to establish, and
if anyone has any further information I'd be interested to hear it.

The one thing that is clear is that we are working from a very
restricted set of data.  My money's on Schele, but it's probably not
wise to attach too much certainty to any theory in this case.  I can
certainly imagine that not everyone who ever inscribed a Long Count
date necessarily understood its large-scale operation in quite the
same way, for example.

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