The Oldest Mayan Calendar Discovered Gives New Insights into 2012

Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
May 11, 2012

 

 

 

 

Researchers William Saturno of Boston University and archaeologist David Stuart from the University of Texas uncovered the oldest Mayan calendar was unearthed amid the ruins of an ancient city in Guatemala.

In the Peten region, archeologists have uncovered a structure as well as the calendar. Interior walls are adorned with curious paintings (one of a line of men in black uniforms), and all indicating back to the Mayan calendar.

This art is unlike anything seen before.

Some of the art attribute calendrical cycles.

The city of Xultun, Guatemala is a 12 square mile site.

The paintings on the structure within the site closely follow the cycles of the moon, Venus and Mars.

  • the 260-day ceremonial calendar
  • the 365-day solar calendar
  • the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus
  • the 780-day cycle of Mars

The hieroglyphs on this calendar are many hundreds of years older than the Dresden codex.

This calendar has 17 baktuns (as opposed to the other representative calendars which have 13 baktuns).

The dates may go on for an estimated 7,000 years .

“The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future,” he said.

Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, said: “It’s like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000. The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over. The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years – and in places other than books – before they recorded them in the Codices.”

The last carved monument within the site dates back to 890 A.D., showing it survived until the end of the Classic Maya period.

“For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community…and they’re painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard,” Dr. Saturno said .

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