[Aztlan] Maya 2012 Question

[Paul Sullivan]

My thanks to those boosting my previous 
works.  I’m currently working on a book on Maya 
prophecy – the same topic on which I wrote my 
1984 dissertation, now supplemented with more 
material, new perspectives, and, I hope, some of 
the wisdom of advancing age.  Regarding the 2012 
controversy – Is this really a Maya thing, or 
something cooked up by New Ageists and others?  I 
haven’t gotten to that chapter yet, but I think 
I’ll have to say it’s some of both.  Just 
addressing for now the Maya side, there’s solid 
evidence since the 1930, and more tentative 
evidence going back a couple of centuries before 
that, of an expectation of a significant period 
ending to occur on or around 2012.  In 1930 
University of Chicago Linguist Manuel Andrade was 
told by Lorenzo Kinil of Chemax that “I have read 
the Testament of Handsome Lord, where he says 
2000 and a few more years the world will 
end.”  Since then there are numerous other Maya 
sources, written and oral, that mention “2000 y 
pico”, “two thousand and a little more.”  What 
will transpire at that time, I was told by folks 
in central Quintana Roo, would be the “wuudz 
anyo”, the “fold of the year”  – the end of this 
world/time, and the beginning of another – and as 
one fellow put it to me, “As much time as the 
epoch has been since the world awoke, that much will go again.”

When did the world awake?  According to one 
passage in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, it was 
in Katun 4 Ahau that the pawahtun were born, the 
four brother-gods who have held up the sky since 
the llast creation of the world.  The “fold of 
the year” is seemingly an allusion to the “wuudz 
katun” of the Books of Chilam Balam, the end of a 
cycle of 13 katuns and the beginning of 
another.  Just when a cycle of katuns began and 
ended (What was the first katun?) varied over 
time and among authors.  But one good candidate 
for the end of a cycle– cited as such in various 
passages of those books – is Katun 4 Ahau.  From 
the Codex Perez, for example, regarding Katun 4 
Ahau, “I promote the first seeing of all that is 
in heaven, all of the days have passed, because 
it is already the fold of the katun.”

There is no evidence that any Maya man or woman 
was keeping track of the Long Count for centuries 
before the arrival of Europeans on the peninsula 
(bringing their calendars with which Mayas could 
then correlate their own).  But there is evidence 
that Mayas kept up a count of katuns and 
maintained an interest in cycle endings, and 
evidence that Katun 4 Ahau was of special 
interest to them, that 2012 concludes a Katun 4 
Ahau, and that Mayas for almost a century have 
anticipated a great transformation around that 
time.  So, in my opinion there’s something to 
this 2012 business.  What others make of it, 
that’s a different story.  And ultimately, of 
course, as long as Mayas and others engage one 
another on this issue, 2012 will be something we fashion together.