[Aztlan] 2012 Resource at FAMSI

[John Major Jenkins]

Sandy, John H., and Listeros,
Thank you for the link to Mark Van Stone's article on 2012 newly posted
to FAMSI. Thank you also to John Hoopes for posting links to our
dialogues with Jan Irvin on "the 2012 Meme".

Regarding Mark Van Stone's interesting essay, I note that it contains no
references to the many points that Van Stone and I dialogued on between
January and August of this year. This is an unfortunate omission.
Neither does it reference my work on the 2012 alignment question
directly, but instead cites a poorly paraphrased definition of the
galactic alignment culled from something popular writer Gregg Braden
wrote. It's unfortunate that my work is constantly conflated with that
of others. In the interest of fairness and completeness, and so that the
interested reader can have access to the full background of exchanges
that occurred between Van Stone and myself, I provide a link to those
exchanges here: http://Alignment2012.com/Jenkins-VanStone2008.html 

Of particular relevance are my extensive responses to Van Stone's
questions,  which I sent to him in May of 2008 but which for reasons
unknown were not factored into his FAMSI article. For your convenience I
provide links to those responses here: 
http://Alignment2012.com/Response-to-Mark-Van-Stone.html 
http://Alignment2012.com/Aprilpg3.pdf  
http://Alignment2012.com/Aprilpg6.pdf  

Even if the piece was completed before our exchanges took place earlier
this year, I would think that the extensive and pointed nature of those
exchanges would have demanded some revisions in his treatment of the
2012 topic, for they mitigate the strength & relevance of some of his
points (e.g., the great length of time attributed to the galactic
alignment). 

As a brief critique of one drawback to Van Stone's approach that I will
offer here, he draws his conclusions exclusively from Classic Period
(and post-Classic Aztec) material but neglects to address the time and
place in which the Long Count was formulated. So he has not directly
dealt with the beliefs attributable to those who created the Long Count
calendar, which many scholars (including Prudence Rice, in her Maya
Calendar Origins) trace back to at least the 1st-century BC. Van Stone's
approach is a bit like trying to figure out the origins of the Roman
empire by examining the events transpiring in Rome in the 9th-century AD
- it's bound to produce false positives. Also, his assertion of a lack
of solstice references in Mesoamerican iconography & archeo-astronomy is
misleading - the ballcourt at Izapa lines up with the December solstice
sunrise horizon. This is a very important and relevant point I've made
many times, and which I emphasized to him in our exchange this past
summer. Without addressing it, any critique of the 2012 meme is
incomplete. Izapa solstice alignment:
http://www.alignment2012.com/ballcourt-schematic-and-description.html

Regarding the copy attached to the announcement of Van Stone's essay on
Famsi, it reads in part: "Maya Scholars, in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize,
Honduras, El Salvador and North America, have been watching with
amusement and dismay as self-styled experts proclaim that ancient Maya
prophets foretold an earth-shattering happening to occur December 21,
2012. This predicted phenomenon gets described in contradictory but
always cataclysmic fashion."

If I am considered to be one of those "self-styled experts", which I'd
gladly allow, I must assert once again that I do not and have never
described 2012 in "a cataclysmic fashion."  The all-inclusive term
"always" in the write up above is therefore inaccurate. In fact, for 20
years I've advocated the opposite interpretation, derived directly from
the Popol Vuh, that cycle endings were thought by the ancient Maya to be
about transformation and renewal. 

In regard to the origin of this much-criticized notion that the ancient
Maya believed 2012 was about a cataclysmic end of the world, listeros
should listen to John Hoopes's comments in the podcast he linked to:

Podcast #004 - The 2012 Meme.  An Interview with Prof. John Hoopes
http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/entry/2008-11-10T20_44_37-08_00

There, Hoopes notes that the first direct reference to 2012 by an
academic writer (in fact, by any writer), can be found in Michael Coe's
1966 edition of The Maya (2011 was the date used in the early
uncorrected editions). And it is there, according to Hoopes, that the
conceptual association between 2012 and an interpretation of cataclysm
was born and thereafter filtered into the popular imagination via Frank
Waters and Jose Arguelles. The origins of the "2012 = cataclysm" meme
has thus been uncovered, thanks to Dr. Hoopes. 
  
For my part, I've always rejected such an interpretation as being
superficial, appealing largely to popular sentiments, fears, and
assumptions. 

John Major Jenkins