2012 and The Mayan Calendar
by This is the 2nd article in the 2012 series of articles. It is significant in both your understanding of what the debate is all about and why the scholars are taking it so seriously. The Mayans were unbelievably advanced in many areas and their calendar is just further proof of this fact.
Image by jimg944 via Flickr
In this article I’m going to familiarize you with the Mayan calendar. This is information you will need to fully understand why the scholars of today are taking the prophecy seriously. The Mayans were chiefly concerned with the movement of venus, the moon and the earth orbit around the sun.
Their calendar actually consists of three calendars, the religious calendar (moon), the solar calendar (earth) and the long count calendar (Venus). The Mayans did not originate this calendar, but rather took its basis from other calendars of the Mesoamerican civilizations that preceded them. Most notably they were the Aztec and the Toltec societies.
They did make refinements to the calendar and it is because of these that they developed an instrument of great predicting qualities. They used the calendar to foresee when important events would take place in the future.
The basic unit is the kin (day), which is the last component of the Long Count.
|
uinal |
(1 uinal = 20 kin = 20 days) |
|
tun |
(1 tun = 18 uinal = 360 days = approx. 1 year) |
|
katun |
(1 katun = 20 tun = 7,200 days = approx. 20 years) |
|
baktun |
(1 baktun = 20 katun = 144,000 days = approx. 394 years) |
The kin, tun, and katun are numbered from 0 to 19.
The uinal are numbered from 0 to 17.
The baktun are numbered from 1 to 13.
As you can see the basic numbering system is a base 20 meaning there are 20 characters in their system instead of 10 as in the system we use. Grasping their use of the long calendar is essential for your understanding of the abilities of the Mayans to predict future events.
Each day is represent by a five-digit number separated by dots. Thus the date representing the creation of the world is shown as 13.0.0.0.0 and has relevance to the subject of discussion. Contrary to our belief as the origin of time should be represented as 0.0.0.0.0 the first digit is 13 because they used a 13-day numbered week and a 20-day named week so the 13 just represents which calendar.
The names of this 20-day week are as follows:
|
0. Ahau |
1. Imix |
2. Ik |
3. Akbal |
|
4. Kan |
5. Chicchan |
6. Cimi |
7. Manik |
|
8. Lamat |
9. Maluc |
10. Oc |
11. Chuen |
|
12. Eb |
13. Ben |
14. Ix |
15. Men |
|
16. Cib |
17. Caban |
18. Etznab |
19. Caunac |
The names of the months for the 20-day calendar are:
|
1. Pop |
2. Uo |
3. Zip |
4. Zotz |
5. Tzec |
6. Xul |
|
7. Yaxkin |
8. Mol |
9. Chen |
10. Yax |
11. Zac |
12. Ceh |
|
13. Mac |
14. Kankin |
15. Muan |
16. Pax |
17. Kayab |
18. Cumku |
Thus you have 18 month of 20 days each for a total of 360 days, but the Mayans new the period of time for the earth to travel around the sun was 365+ days so to account for the extra days they had another period of time known as Uayeb that was 5.242036 days long.
What all this boils down to is that the Mayans were very observant, but even more importantly they were curious about the beginning and the end of days for the current era. The end date or the day the Mayan calendar resets to zero is December 21, 2012. Now this is not to say that they were predicting anything at all this is just how the mathematical progression works for the calendar. Of course it does not mean they weren’t.
In the next article we’ll go into things that are going to happen in the year 2012 leading up to 12/21/12.
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