[Aztlan] 13 x 20 is commonplace

[ECOLING at aol.com]

Carl Calloway may have brought out something intresting, I don't know,
that requires a few more minutes and more than a first reading to evaluate.

But I have to point out two weaknesses immediately.
Carl writes:

<<
What is so very extraordinary about this CR is that  if you count 13 B'aktuns 
above or below it you will end up on a day 12 Lamat. Count 13 B'aktuns and 13 
Piktuns above or below the day 12 Lamat 11 Kumk'u and one will again fall 
upon a day with a 12 Lamat. Keep adding higher cycles with multiples of 13 and 
one will land on yet another 12 Lamat (note if the base CR was 11 Imix, or any 
other 260 day, then following the same addition of thirteen cycles, another 11 
day 11 Imix will be reached).>>

This is not extraordinary at all.   

Any even number of Winals will be divisible by 20.
So a multiple of 13 times that 
(or 13 times any larger period ending which is a multiple of winals,   
like TUUN, K'atun, Baktun, etc.)
taken as a DN Distance Number, will not change the day of the Tzolk'in at 
all.   

This is most emphatically *not* a property of the particular calendar round 
mentioned by Carl,
nor of any particular calendar round.   It is true for *all* calendar rounds,
and is a property of the base-20 system and the 260-day cycle.

This should be a warning sign of how easy it is to believe there is 
something significant in facts where there is nothing such at all,
there is mere mathematical necessity.   Like the fact that any decimal
number ending in 0 is divisible by 5.   That says nothing about what
the Maya were thinking about any particular dates.

*

Carl's wish to refer to "13.0.0.0.0" as the "Era Event" embodies
the same unwarranted assumption as I was commenting on with
John Major Jenkins.   (At least if it refers to the future.)
Referring to the date in 3114 BC, we can more objectively term it something
like the zero-point of the (present 5-digit) long-count.
It is not a good idea to embody wishes and assumptions in terminology,
unless we are truly certain that the assumptions are all correct,
not merely wishful hypotheses.
In that I agree with Carl (so not "creation event", 
but the term "era event" is just as full of assumptions.

I'll get back to the more interesting possibilities that Carl mentions.

Best wishes,
Lloyd

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics
PO Box 15156
Washington DC 20003
ecoling at aol.com
202-547-7683



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