What's Up With the Mayans?

Pipestone County Star – 01-10-13

So the world didn’t end on Friday, December 21^st like the Mayans supposedly told us it would.  Or perhaps I should say various crazy people told us it would.  Personally, I was almost hoping for it, since the end of the world would mean no more car payments, but we would have missed Christmas…

I wanted to know just how this prediction came to pass, so I thought it might make a good column – hope you enjoy it!

The Mayans were a very advanced culture that inhabited southern Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.  They flourished from around 1800 BCE (Before Common Era) until 900 CE (Common Era) with their golden age occurring right around the end of that time.  For some reason, around 900 CE, they abandoned their fantastic villages, temples, and pyramids, scattering to the four winds.  Mayan is still spoken as a language in the area, but the ruins are just that – ruins.  Their architectural prowess was on par with the Romans, including irrigation systems, sophisticated mathematics and astronomical calculations, and yes, even the calendar.

This is what all the fuss is about – a stone tablet found in southern Mexico in the 1960s.  According to this tablet, called Monument Six, something is going to happen in the year 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, their god of creation and war.  It doesn’t say what is going to happen, nor does it give an exact date – that part of the carving was damaged.  So how did they come up with the date December 21^st, 2012?

According to Mayan scholars, the civilization used three different calendar methods simultaneously with one another: The Long Count, the Tzolkin (divine calendar) and the Haab (civil calendar).  To go into detail about all of these would be terribly painful, but it is interesting to note that their civil calendar also had 365 days, just like our Julian calendar. 

The Long Count consists of 5 Great Cycles, each of which are 1,872,000 days long.  According to those same scholars, the last Great Cycle began on the 11^th of August in 3114 BCE, meaning that the last day of that Great Cycle was December 11, 2012.  Astronomically speaking, there was also a close conjunction of the winter solstice sun with the galactic equator (the midline for our galaxy) at 11:00 pm Greenwich mean time on that date as well, something that would have last happened 26,000 years ago with the beginning of the first Great Cycle. 

So the question is, were the Mayans tracking this conjunction or did they simply need to go to the store to buy a new calendar?  I’m not being facetious (well, maybe a little), but if an archaeologist unearthed the calendar from my house, would he think that we thought the world would end on December 31^st of that year simply because I had not purchased a new one?  An interesting thought.

So, since we’re all still here to read this, obviously the scholars were right and the world wasn’t set to end.  We can hope, however, for a time of change that will lead us in a better direction and possibly bring more positive energy to the planet and all its inhabitants.   Hope you had a great holiday and welcome to 2013!!

PAFL Update:  Pipestone Area Friends of the Library is looking for members – anyone who is a friend to Meinders Library is welcome to join!  The Friends group works hard to promote the library, raise money for projects, and organize their yearly book sale, in addition to the HUGE amount of support they provide throughout the year.  For more information, please contact the library!

Book Club Reminder:  Book Club meets the fourth Thursday of each month (except December) in the Meinders Library conference room.  The next meeting is January 24^th at 7:00 PM and the book is The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman.  Everyone is welcome. 

If you have questions or have a book you’d like to reserve or renew, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at (507) 825-6714.  The hours for Meinders Library are Monday through Thursday from 10 AM – 8 PM, and Friday and Saturday from 10 AM – 5 PM.  Meinders Community Library is located at 1401 7^th Street SW, on the south side of the high school.