Archeologists Find Mayan Calendar Pictographs Indicating Time Beyond 2012

by Robert Wilkinson

Well, I sure am glad the world won’t come to an end in December 2012! (/sarcasm). It seems that some archeologists have found a “Mayan calendar workshop” that documents time beyond 2012, showing there will be “baktuns” beyond the end of this one extending for thousands and millions of years into the future.

This great news that life will go on past December 2012 is courtesy of the MSNBC story, Maya calendar workshop documents time beyond 2012 where we read that archeologists have discovered a 1200 year old house that was obviously used by Mayan scribes for many years. It has pictographs all over the walls with pictures associated with various elements of the Mayan calendars in use at the time. You can see several pictures of these drawings by going to the MSNBC story link I just provided.

Anyway, a bit from the story to whet your appetites:

Archaeologists have found a stunning array of 1,200-year-old Maya paintings in a room that appears to have been a workshop for calendar scribes and priests, with numerical markings on the wall that denote intervals of time well beyond the controversial cycle that runs out this December.

For years, prophets of doom have been saying that we're in for an apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012, because that marks the end of the Maya "Long Count" calendar, which was based on a cycle of 13 intervals known as "baktuns," each lasting 144,000 days. But the researchers behind the latest find, detailed in the journal "Science" and an upcoming issue of "National Geographic," say the writing on the wall runs counter to that bogus belief.

"It's very clear that the 2012 date, this end of 13 baktuns, while important, was turning the page," David Stuart, an expert on Maya hieroglyphs at the University of Texas at Austin, told reporters today. "Baktun 14 was going to be coming, and Baktun 15 and Baktun 16. ... The Maya calendar is going to keep going, and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future."

Here’s a little more:

In a news release, (Boston U. archeologist William) Saturno said this represents the first look at "what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community."

"It's like an episode of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall," Saturno said. "They seem to be using it like a blackboard."

In addition to lunar cycles, the calculations on the wall could relate to the periods of Venus, Mercury and Mars, the researchers reported. Stuart said such calculations could have come into play for predicting eclipses. He imagined that there might be "one or more, maybe two or three of these astronomers or calendar priests working, sitting there on a workbench and writing these notations on the wall."

One array of numbers would be particularly intriguing to doomsday debunkers: lists that appear to denote wide ranges of accumulated time, including a 17-baktun period. "There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns," Stuart observed. Seventeen baktuns would stand for about 6,700 years, which is much longer than the 13-baktun cycle of 5,125 years. However, Stuart cautioned that the time notation shouldn't be read as specifying a date that's farther in the future than Dec. 21.

"It may just be that this is a mathematical number that they find interesting, kind of floating in time," he told me. "But it certainly is expressing a capacity of time. If they were calculating something from their time period, around 800 A.D., yeah, this would have gone way beyond 2012. But again, we're not sure exactly what the base of the calculation is."

In the story one of the archeologists goes on to state (as I’ve long maintained) that the end of this Mayan calendar cycle is like an odometer turning from 99999 to 00000, beginning a new tabulation within the next “long period.” Here it's useful to remember that time, the 4th dimension, is the medium by which we measure our progression through perceptual experience in the 3 obvious dimensions of human life. And time is very relative due to many factors.

So as we do a countdown to the Mayan New Year’s Rocking Eve (all thanks to the great Dick Clark!), remember to love, dance, smile, and celebrate that though we may be at “the end of time,” life does and will go on, for all of us to enjoy and live to the fullest we are able. And that’s a very good thing!!

Copyright © 2012 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[alan mesher]

Good work Robert!

[Maya Earth Coffee]

Thanks for posting this Robert. I saw the article yesterday and said to myself "this doesn't surprise me". As archaeologists continue uncovering "treasures" at Mayan sites, they will continue to find interesting information regarding the Maya and their calendars.

Like your description above "countdown to the Mayan New Year’s Rocking Eve", a Mayan spiritual guide from Momostenango said in a recent article that his community is planning to celebrate the change of the 2012 cycle "a lo grande" (big time). I look forward to being in Guatemala in December to celebrate this important occasion.

Paz y luz

[Debbie Eastick]

This did give me a chuckle, just like the article in the UK Telegraph, scientisits confirm we are still evolving, no! really? you mean that although we have evolved through many phases to become homo sapien that that's not the last one?! hahaha, just hope they pick a good name for our next evolutionary platform, how about spiritus sanctium has a nice ring to it.

Good work Robert!

[dcu]

Gee, I guess Madame Blavatsky quoting from the Stanzas of Dyzan about the Root-Race cycles may be right after all. If I remember correctly we are now entering the sixth sub-race of the Fifth Root-Race. There are a total of seven Root-Races, so we still have miles to go before we sleep. (grin)