[Aztlan] MA: 2012

[Hoopes, John W]

Here's a bit of 2012 irony:

The keynote speaker at the Texas Maya Meetings this evening is Michael
Coe, who's giving a lecture entitled "In Search of the Snake-footed God:
K'awiil and Tezcatlipoca". There will also be a film premiere: "Breaking
the Maya Code" (based on Coe's book of the same title). 

In his 1966 book, "The Maya" (New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc.), Coe
wrote: 

"The idea of cyclical creations and destructions is a typical feature of
Mesoamerican religions, as it is of Oriental. The Aztec, for instance,
thought that the universe had passed through four such ages, and that we
were now in the fifth, to be destroyed by earthquakes. The Maya thought
along the same lines, in terms of eras of great length, like the Hindu
kalpas. There is a suggestion that each of these measured 13 baktuns, or
something less than 5,200 years, and that Armageddon would overtake the
degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the
thirteenth. Thus, following the Thompson correlation, our present
universe would have been created in 3113 BC, to be annihilated on
December 24, 2011, when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches
completion" (p. 149). 

Initially written for a Havard extension course, this was the first
widely available paperback book on the ancient Maya (before this, the
principal references were Morley and Thompson). Although Coe is
undoubtedly mortified to consider it, I suspect this paragraph is what
started over four decades of speculation that have resulted in a great
deal of hype about 2012, including tomorrow's Hollywood conference.

Coe appears to have been the first modern scholar to use the Maya
calendar to calculate a date in the future.  I'd be grateful to anyone
who can demonstrate otherwise.

John Hoopes