Maya Baktun 13 Ends December 21, 2012—Does It Spell Doomsday for All of Us?

I knew I'd be writing this blog sooner or later. When this cartoon showed up yesterday on Facebook, it seemed the time had come.

What's going on?  

The pyramid and palm trees in the background suggest the Yucatán Peninsula of southern Mexico, the land of the Maya. The artisan is holding a so-called calendar stone.

The cartoon, of course, refers to the end of the Maya time period baktun 13, which will occur on December 21, 2012—and supposedly spells doomsday for all of us.

The humor in the cartoon is well taken and stands on its own. But the cartoon is based on a number of misconceptions that present a unique teaching moment that can't be passed up—so here goes!

Live links take you to other relevant Blogs and Pages in Jenny's Journal.

Aztec Cosmovision: Stone of the Five Suns

First, the 'calendar stone' depicted is not Maya. It was created by the Méxica (Aztecs) on the High Plateau in the center of Mexico some time around 1400 A.D.—five hundred years after the Maya civilization had gone into decline and its cities were abandoned (cerca 900 A.D.)

Next, the 'calendar stone' is not a calendar at all.  It depicts the Méxica conception of the cosmic order—the Aztec cosmovision. In the Méxica creation myth, it took the gods five tries before they succeeded in making creatures who could speak and hence were able to give appropriate praise to their creators.

The five worlds were called 'suns' and were named for the force that destroyed them:  Jaguar, Wind, Fire, Water, Sun.  The fifth sun was created after the gods made the ancestors of the Méxica and their life-sustaining maíz (corn). Thus, a more appropriate name for this ancient carved stone is 'stone of the five suns'. (See Jenny's Page:  Aztec: Cosmovision: Stone of the Five Suns.)

Mesoamerican Calendars

Finally, Mesoamerican civilization actually developed three calendars—two of which were cyclical.

Solar Calendar:  This 365-day calendar—virtually identical to our Gregorian calendar but without leap year—organized the agricultural cycle of planting and harvest. It was composed of 18 periods ("months") of 20 days, with five days added at the end to match the solar cycle.

Divinatory Calendar:  This 260-day calendar was used to foresee the course of an individual's life and the outcome of actions. The rotating combination of one of 20 names—each associated with a god—with a number from one to thirteen, determined the balance of good and evil forces for the day and, thus, the quality of the outcome of any event occurring on that day, including the birth of each individual and, hence, his or her destiny.

Long Count Calendar: This third calendar, created by the Maya, was linear and used to date events, particularly the actions of kings.  It is now called the Long Count calendar because it marks the sequential passage of  historical time.

Deciphering ancient glyphic inscriptions, scholars have analyzed how this Long Count calendar worked. They can accurately correlate Long Count dates with equivalent dates in our Gregorian calendar, so we can know the specific date on our calendar when a Mayan king was born, ascended the throne, married, fought an important battle and died.

For example, we now know that Pakal, the most famous king of the city-state Palenque, was born March 23, 603 A.D. and died August 28, 683 A.D. at the age of eighty. However, each of these dates in the Long Count is recorded as a sequence of five numbers. For Pakal, the arabic numeral equivalents are 9.8.9.13.0 and 9.12.11.5.18. What do these five numbers mean?

The Gregorian calendar numbers our years counting backward and forward from the historically and culturally significant event of the presumed birth year of Jesus Christ. Similarly, Maya times were numbered from a date endowed with religious and cosmic significance: the creation date of the present world order, Aug. 11, 3114 B.C.  Yes—you read the date correctly:  3114 B.C.!

In structure and time frame, the Maya Long Count calendar is similar to the Jewish calendar, which also measures history from a presumed date of creation. The Jewish year 5772 began at sunset on 28 September 2011. Adding the 2,011 years A.D. to the B.C. Maya date gives 5125 years since the Maya creation date—remarkably, there is a mere 650 years difference between the Jewish and Maya Long Count calendars across 5,000 years. All dates in the Long Count measure time from this date of creation.

Maya Calendar Units

The Maya did not have our decimal system of units of ten, represented by ten Arabic numerals. Instead, Maya calendar units are organized in multiples of 20. To represent these numbers, the Maya used:

• Dots to represented the numbers 1 to 4;
• A bar to represent the numeral  5;
• Sets of bars to represent sets of 5 up to the quantity 15; 
• A symbol of a shell to represent '0', which marked the completion of a set; that is, a full set of any unit of 20.  

Food for Thought:  The concept of zero has taken place only twice in history—once in India, among the Hindus, and once in Mesoamerica, among the Maya (Source: The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya by Mary Miller and Karl Taube). 

In the center glyph, the three (stacked) dots and three (vertical) bars represent the number 18.

The units of time in the Long Count are as follows, in units of 20 with one exception (Tun):

• Kin is a day;
• Uinal is a month-like unit of 20 kins;
• Tun is a year of 18 uinals, making a year of 360 days; the five extra days of the solar year were not included in the Long Count;
• Katun represented an interval of  20 tuns (a little short of 20 solar years);
• Baktun represented an interval of 20 katuns (a little short of 400 years). 

Some ancient inscriptions provide an even larger unit, the pictun, which is composed of 20 baktuns (or about 8,000 years, close to our concept of the 1,000-year millenium).

So how do we read Pakal's Long Count numbers, 9.8.9.13.0 and 9.12.11.5.18? From left to right, the order is from the baktun down to the kin, the day. Thus, Pakal's birthdate in the Long Count is 9 baktuns, 8 katuns, 9 tuns, 13 uinals and 0 kins after the day of creation.

What is the Maya calendar about to do in its transition to baktun 14? 

On December 21, 2012, an event dated by the Maya, the Long Count will read 13.0.0.0.0—thus marking the beginning of baktun 14.

Confused? Remember that December 31, 1999, was the last day of the twentieth century—and January 1, 2000, was celebrated as the first day of the twenty-first century. Factoid Reed just reminded me that technically the twentieth century ended on December 31, 2000; January 1, 2001, marked the beginning of the twenty-first century. But you get the idea!

In our system, the century name is ahead of the hundred years marked on the calendar.  In a similar manner, the Long Count 13.0.0.0.0 represents the completion of baktun 13—the thirteenth 400-year period in Maya history—and marks the first day of baktun 14.

Time and history go on.

Still Curious? 

If you're still curious about December 21, 2012, you might enjoy reading an astronomer's engaging account: "The Great 2012 Doomsday Scare," by E. C. Krupp, Director of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Here's the link: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-guest.html

Here's the link to Jenny's post based on translation of an interview with Mexican scholar Erik Velásquez García, who contends that the notion of the Maya prophecy is a 'Western' European idea completely unrelated to Maya culture:  http://jennysmexico.blogspot.com/2012/03/unam-researcher-debunks-maya-end-of.html