[Aztlan] 2012

[Jeff Chouinard]

At the Mayan Calendar web site, we get asked a lot of questions about the
ancient calendar. The most common misconception is that there is as 1-to-1
correlation between particular Gregorian days and particular sets of glyphs.
"Please send me the glyphs for my birthday, which is June 13th. I'm going to
get a tattoo." 

 

Sometimes they ask if the Maya regarded time as cyclical or linear. Some
people insist that it can only be one or the other, and others know for
certain that it is either absolutely cyclic or absolutely linear. I don't
know if  they're receptive to learning the real significance of 2012. I
don't know if the Maya even had a word for "time" as an abstract concept, in
spite of the fact that virtually every statement in their languages, then
and now, begins with a time determinator.

 

But they certainly were sensitive to the repetition of certain events at
predictable intervals-something we would call "cycles."  But they would
probably not use a word like 'cycle,' because they had no wheel, or wheel
analogy. Many of these were astronomical repetitions, beginning with the
predictable repetition of the sun's and the moon's risings and settings, and
then becoming more sophisticated with the determination of day-count
intervals between the points on the horizon of maximum annual northerly and
southerly sunrises and sunsets, and the day intervals for the phases of the
moon, and finally, predictable intervals between nodes for lunar and solar
eclipses. In that sense, they recognized and measured "cycles," well enough
to estimate expected repetitions of astronomical events like the maximum
rising of Venus as Morningstar. And knowledge of these repetitive intervals
were helpful for predicting rainy seasons and harvest times.  So, for them,
"time" (our word) was "cyclical" (our concept). Astrologically, they
believed that certain invisible influences recurred on certain days of their
calendar year-days of the ghosts at Wayeb, for example.

 

But their were other intervals they noted in their inscriptions-numbers of
days between one event and another, called distance numbers.   Numbers of
days between birth and first bloodletting, between an anchoring date and a
coronation, or between another significant date and the death of a king.
Measurements of royal lifetimes, irregular in intervals, were the keys to
Prosouriakoff's understanding of the significance of the date intervals on
stelae at Dos Pilas. Long Counts are clear evidence of the Maya concept of
linear time.  

 

But some folks demand a reconciliation between cyclical and linear, and I
tell them this.  Look at a coiled spring, a helix, from a specific angle,
from one end of it, and it appears to be a circle.  Turn it sideways, and it
appears to a linear oscillation, a saw-tooth, or sine wave.  A helix is
exactly the path described by orbiting astral bodies, whether it's the earth
around the moving sun, or the moon around the moving earth.  It is the
residual earthly evidence of these astronomical phenomena-both "cyclical"
and "linear," that the Maya correctly perceived.  So, even without
understanding the mechanics of the solar system, they understood that "time"
was both cyclical and linear.

 

 

--Jeffrey Chouinard

   www.mayan-calendar.com

   kankawil at rcn.com