Coba, Mexico
Facts and figures alert! The Maya used a dual calendar system. And here's how it worked...
The first was the ceremonial calendar known as the Tzolkin running over 260 day periods, which dictated religious observance, agricultural activities, family affairs and pre-destined the life of the Maya according to their birth date. It was made up of 20 'day' cycles which ran alongside 13 'number' cycles in unique combinations until the 260th day when it started all over again, and was astrological in nature predicting political, climate and life events.
According to this calendar Coman's birthdate names him as Zac, meaning "Ray of sun/Healing with hands". I become Kan Kin, meaning "Tree of Life/Advice giver/Firmly grounded to earth".
The second was the solar calendar known as Haab, which was divided into 18 months of 20 days, and a nineteenth very unlucky month of just five days, corresponding to mid-August, when Venus disappeared from the Mayan sky. So 365 days in total.
The Haab and the Tzolkin were synchronised and represented on the calendar wheels like clockwork cogs. This combined cycle lasted 52 years, meaning Mayan 'centuries' were measured in periods of 52 years, which exceeded Mayan life expectancy.
These two calendar measurements are still the most accurate ever devised. The Gregorian calendar of 12 months that we use to this day is inaccurate to the tune of six hours every year, meaning every four years we have to compensate with an extra 24 hour day, hence the concept of the leap year. The Mayan calendar however is inaccurate by only 17 seconds every 52 years. Extraordinary!
And as for the Mayan 'Doomsday' prophecy, well that's based upon a further astronomical calendar called the Long Count and stretched over millennia. It started on August 13, 3114 BC and is measured in periods called Katun (7,200 days) and Baktun (144,000 days). The calendar has 13 Baktun and the 13th and final Baktun ended on that fateful day, December 21, 2012.
But what all the doom-mongers missed is that this is just another wheel within a wheel, not an end but purely a cog within an even larger astronomical clock.
Our Coba tour guide, Galo, plays us an hysterically apocalyptic History Channel documentary on the coach's video screens as we drive along which asserts that the Maya accurately predicted wars, famines, revolutions, epidemics and a whole variety of other specific events over the last few centuries, even 9/11, and that the end of the 13th Baktun - Doomsday - will probably involve both nuclear war and cosmic destruction.
However this Long Count calendar is just the first of five epochs, which when added together come to a futher astronomical measurement of time, equating to 26,000 years. And recent astronomy has established that every 26,000 years the earth rotates on its axis meaning the whole galaxy of stars above us slowly goes through that big rotation too, a phenomenon called Precession. And then we start again.
How the Maya - and other ancient civilisations such as the Egyptians - could possibly measure time so accurately and not only have knowledge of phenomena which can barely even be observed with the astronomical data we have today, but build vast architectural pyramid complexes based upon that knowledge (for instance, Chichen Itza, Teotihuacan, the Pyramids at Giza and many other ancient sites all correspond precisely to the constellation of Orion's Belt and can measure all sorts of astronomical events) is one of history's greatest mysteries.
Therefore the Maya never predicted the end of the world. Just the end of the first Long Count since they believe their people were born. And the start of the second Long Count; a new age which we have just entered.
So, cheers! Happy birthday everyone. Let's toast the Maya!!
