Re: calendars (was: samhain?)

Mark J. Reed wrote at 2004-11-05 15:16:43 (-0500)
 > On Fri, Nov 05, 2004 at 03:29:04PM +0000, Tim May wrote:
 > > (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.
 >
 > Well, aren't you Mr. Spoil-Sport. :)
 >
 > Thanks for the post, though.  I had been confused by the 13 vs. 0 thing
 > and the various sources I used to research the Mayan calendars seemed to
 > disagree on the implications.  I didn't realize there was more general
 > evidence that they used the 13 glyph to mean 0.    Seems odd that they
 > didn't use 19, though.
 >

It's weird, there's no doubt about that.

 > > Now, the zero day of this calendar is August 13, 3114 B.C. (by the best
 > > correlation we have).
 >
 > First, that's August 13th in the retrojected *Gregorian* calendar.
 > In almost all contexts, B.C. dates are given in the Julian
 > calendar, so you need to signify when you're doing otherwise.  In
 > the Julian calendar, your correspondence date is September 8, 3114
 > BC.
 >
 > Further, there seems to be some dispute there, as well.  My Dec 21,
 > 2012, date for (the next) 13.0.0.0.0 was using the
 > Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation for zero date, which places
 > it two days earlier (on August 11th Gregorian = Sept 6th Julian).

Yes... I've been looking into this.  First, it seems to be fairly
common to give Maya dates in backdated Gregorian, despite this being
rare elsewhere.  (It hadn't actually ocurred to me that it might be
Gregorian - I just took the date from the book).  Secondly, the GMT
correlation is only accurate to a three-day period, depending on how a
certain transition between the classical and postclassical calendars
was actually carried out...  The Julian day numbers of the possible
zero-dates are:

584283   11 August 3114 BC (Gregorian)   6 September 3114 BC (Julian)
584284   12 August 3114 BC (Gregorian)   7 September 3114 BC (Julian)
584285   13 August 3114 BC (Gregorian)   8 September 3114 BC (Julian)

Apparently, the '84 correlation was initially most popular with
Mayanists, but has since fallen from favour.  Linda Schele favoured
the '85 correlation, following Floyd Lounsbury, largely for
astronomical reasons, but the '83 date has gained popularity recently
for ethnohistorical reasons.  Both remain common, so far as I can
judge.

If you're interested in the details, there's a page here[1], on one of
the saner of the sites I found while looking this stuff up.  (The
author seems to accept the 13-baktun cycle theory as likely, although
he dosen't make a big deal of it or discuss the matter in detail.)


 >
 > > 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.
 >
 > I'll try not to take that personally. :)  But I should point out, in
 > case it's not obvious, that I have never taken this theory seriously and
 > do not expect the world to end in 2012.  That is, of course, unless Gaia
 > herself objects to the reelection of Hillary Clinton for a second term
 > as President . . . ;-)

Oh, I didn't mean _you_, Marcos.  But when you try looking this stuff
up online psychoceramics outnumbers serious scholarship by a
considerable margin ;).  I certainly never got the impression that you
thought the world was going to end.



[1] http://members.shaw.ca/mjfinley/corr.html

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