We know that tens of thousands of records created over millenniums were destroyed and that information preserved not only events during the more than thousand years that they flowered as a high civilization, but all the information came down to them from the presence of their predecessors on the American continent for an estimated 25,000 years. Although with that destruction would have been information about 2012.
But there is a glimmer of hope because although the massive paper record of the civilization was destroyed, there is another source—a history written in stone.
We do have some record of the Maya and other Mesoamerican civilizations in their etching on stone and painted on walls, but even most of these were destroyed as the great monuments of Mesoamerica were dismantled by the European conquerors in order to use the building materials in their own structures—and sometimes simply to destroy all the remnants of the native American cultures in order to keep political dominance.
What little survived of the cultures is carved in stone on walls and stone slabs that we call “stele”. The most famous stele with a 2012 connection was found at Izapa, a site on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. Called Stele 25, the stone slab depicts a galactic alignment that marks the end of the Long Count calendar. We know now that there will in fact be a galactic alignment at that time, an event that astronomically only occurs once every 26,000 years.
In addition to this astronomical event, the Maya left carvings in stone that refer to the cycles of global disasters that their world had undergone over the ages, the periods of time they called “suns.”
The mistake many of the 2012 doubters make is that they view the Long Count calendar as merely a sequence of dates, as our own calendar is. But that is not correct—the Maya long calendar was not just a reflection of insignificant dates but a history of disasters. Unlike the annual calendar, it does not reflect a completely accurate tabulations of dates going back thousands of years; rather, the count begins with a legendary event, a time when their world last suffered cataclysmic events: destruction and creation.
The 2012 deniers ignore the fact that while the Maya had a annual calendar that was designed for everyday use (a multiple of 260 and 365 days called the Calendar Round) just as our calendars are, the Long Count calendar system was predicated upon cyclical cataclysmic events that surrounding the rebirth of their world after it was shattered.
So the concern about a catastrophic event lying in wait that will jump out at us on December 21, 2012 is not just the fact that is the last day on the calendar, but the fact that the Maya designed the calendar to reflect when cataclysmic events would occur, just as they believed it did four times previously.
An interesting aspect of the Long Count calendar being approximately 26,000 years long as 2012 is that figure coincides with the approximately 25,000 years ago that science estimates the ancestors of indigenous Americans started coming across the Baring Strait Land Bridge. There will be more about that later.
We have discussed the fact that any extensive record of 2012 events would have been destroyed when literally the entire written foundation of their civilization was burned, leaving just three documents out of tens of thousands and a few inscriptions on stone.
From my studies and analysis, I cannot see a basis for a serious scholar to simply say the Maya never recorded the reason for their 2012 end time prophecy. They best that can be said is that any specific record would have been destroyed but there are clues left in stone that tell us that the Long Count calendar itself is the biggest single piece of evidence because it is based upon cataclysmic events.
We will be discussing how, in an uncanny way, the Maya End Time scenarios are similar to Biblical apocalyptic events.
My next blog will deal with the question as to whether there is scientific support for the 2012 end time prophecy.
--My friend and co-author, Junius Podrug, contributed this blog.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Thursday, December 17, 2009
What does the written record of nearly 2000 years of Maya civilization say about 2012?
We last discussed the fact that the Maya had amassed the history of their civilization their books. We will now talk about what happened to these books.
The Maya and their predecessors like the Olmec and Teotihuacán also had a long history of gathering and preserving knowledge, going back more than a couple of thousand years before they first came into contact with Europeans in the early 1500s. In addition to being the keepers of knowledge passed down from their ancestors and predecessors, they shared information with other indigenous North American civilizations occupied the region we call Mesoamerica (central Mexico to Central America) such as the Aztec, Toltec, Zapotec, etc.
The Maya, like the Aztecs, created tens of thousands of books that today we call codices. Each codex was a work of art, manufactured from excellent paper obtained from the bark of a fig tree and processed into good paper. Their paper was of better quality and lasted longer than the papyrus developed in Egypt and favored by the Romans. Their scribes created books that could be read much the same as our own books are read today.
We don’t know how many of these books were made, but we do know that European priests soon after the conquest destroyed all that they could find, many thousands of them. Unfortunately, the ones the Maya were able to hid were put into caves and perished over the centuries in the wet climate.
Incredibly, of the perhaps tens of thousands of books written, only three codices (and a fragment of a fourth) exist today.
Unfortunately for the indigenous civilizations of Mesoamerica, they would have fared better had they been more advanced in weaponry than astronomy and literature.
This burning of the written record of the Maya, Aztec and other Mesoamerica cultures was the destruction of the entire history and science of a great civilization. It has been compared to the accidental destruction of the Ancient Library of Alexandria by Julius Caesar two thousand years ago.
Just as the Alexandria Library was the storehouse of much of the knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean world—the products of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and others—the destruction of the books of the Mesoamerica civilizations was the lost of a vast and irreplaceable record of thousands of years of science and history.
The destruction of the Mesoamerican books was an even greater blow than that of the Alexandria library because in the case of the latter, the records kept by Mediterranean civilizations like the Greeks and Romans survived independently of the library because there was no concerted effort by an enemy to totally wipe out all traces of the cultures that created them. The equivalent to what the Spanish did to the Maya would have been for the conquering Romans to have destroyed all Greek culture and history, including its temples like the Parthenon, and have used the Sphinx and great pyramids for building materials after the conquest of Egypt.
What type of historical and scientific information would the Maya have recorded in the thousands of codices? Because the Maya are so similar to other ancient cultures that we are familiar with, we can assume that they recorded a wide range of information, including historical, religious, astronomical, legends, wars, the lives of royalty—in other words, just about everything of importance that happened, including information about the 2012 phenomena.
We can also infer that they recorded the tales that came down to them from the earliest time human beings were on the American continent, a history going back 25,000 years. These process would be no different than other ancient civilizations recorded their “prehistory” occurrences that had an historical basis but were passed down over the eons by campfire storytellers such as those that preserved Homer’s tales of the Greeks before the stories were put into writing.
While the Maya’s history and science recorded history in books did not survive the almost total European annihilation of their culture, some record of a 2012 nature did survive and we will discuss that in our next blog.
In regard to the question of whether a written record was left of a potential 2012 event, we’ll discover that the answer is yes.
My friend and co-author, Junius Podrug, contributed this blog.
The Maya and their predecessors like the Olmec and Teotihuacán also had a long history of gathering and preserving knowledge, going back more than a couple of thousand years before they first came into contact with Europeans in the early 1500s. In addition to being the keepers of knowledge passed down from their ancestors and predecessors, they shared information with other indigenous North American civilizations occupied the region we call Mesoamerica (central Mexico to Central America) such as the Aztec, Toltec, Zapotec, etc.
The Maya, like the Aztecs, created tens of thousands of books that today we call codices. Each codex was a work of art, manufactured from excellent paper obtained from the bark of a fig tree and processed into good paper. Their paper was of better quality and lasted longer than the papyrus developed in Egypt and favored by the Romans. Their scribes created books that could be read much the same as our own books are read today.
We don’t know how many of these books were made, but we do know that European priests soon after the conquest destroyed all that they could find, many thousands of them. Unfortunately, the ones the Maya were able to hid were put into caves and perished over the centuries in the wet climate.
Incredibly, of the perhaps tens of thousands of books written, only three codices (and a fragment of a fourth) exist today.
Unfortunately for the indigenous civilizations of Mesoamerica, they would have fared better had they been more advanced in weaponry than astronomy and literature.
This burning of the written record of the Maya, Aztec and other Mesoamerica cultures was the destruction of the entire history and science of a great civilization. It has been compared to the accidental destruction of the Ancient Library of Alexandria by Julius Caesar two thousand years ago.
Just as the Alexandria Library was the storehouse of much of the knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean world—the products of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and others—the destruction of the books of the Mesoamerica civilizations was the lost of a vast and irreplaceable record of thousands of years of science and history.
The destruction of the Mesoamerican books was an even greater blow than that of the Alexandria library because in the case of the latter, the records kept by Mediterranean civilizations like the Greeks and Romans survived independently of the library because there was no concerted effort by an enemy to totally wipe out all traces of the cultures that created them. The equivalent to what the Spanish did to the Maya would have been for the conquering Romans to have destroyed all Greek culture and history, including its temples like the Parthenon, and have used the Sphinx and great pyramids for building materials after the conquest of Egypt.
What type of historical and scientific information would the Maya have recorded in the thousands of codices? Because the Maya are so similar to other ancient cultures that we are familiar with, we can assume that they recorded a wide range of information, including historical, religious, astronomical, legends, wars, the lives of royalty—in other words, just about everything of importance that happened, including information about the 2012 phenomena.
We can also infer that they recorded the tales that came down to them from the earliest time human beings were on the American continent, a history going back 25,000 years. These process would be no different than other ancient civilizations recorded their “prehistory” occurrences that had an historical basis but were passed down over the eons by campfire storytellers such as those that preserved Homer’s tales of the Greeks before the stories were put into writing.
While the Maya’s history and science recorded history in books did not survive the almost total European annihilation of their culture, some record of a 2012 nature did survive and we will discuss that in our next blog.
In regard to the question of whether a written record was left of a potential 2012 event, we’ll discover that the answer is yes.
My friend and co-author, Junius Podrug, contributed this blog.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Is there historical and scientific evidence supporting a theory that the Maya had knowledge of a significant 2012 event?
Some people question whether the Maya actually knew something was going to happen on Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012. They point to a lack of specific mention in their writings and scientific confirmation. These naysayers are wrong on both counts.
The next series of blogs will discuss the historical and scientific basis of what I will call for convenience sake, the “Maya 2012 End Time Prophecy.” The conclusions reached after research and analysis surprised even me. I’ll start with this question: Did the Maya leave a written record revealing that a cosmic event will occur on December 21, 2012?
We need to first discuss why the Maya calendar date that equates to our date of December 21, 2012 has become a matter of concern as the date approached.
Basically, the Maya believed that the world around them suffered catastrophic events four times in the past and that the fifth such event would occur on the Winter Solstice, 2012 date. Rather incredibly, the events that they believed caused global annihilation in the past roughly mirror Biblical disasters such as the Flood and the cataclysmic destruction of ancient cities by fire from the sky and eruptions of the earth.
We also know from geological evidence that life on our planet was almost completely wiped out a number of times before recorded history. These events, such as mega volcanoes and asteroid and comet strikes, including ones the Maya would have knowledge of, will be discussed later.
It needs to be emphasized again that the Maya were a highly advanced and literate culture. This has to be important to keep in mind because there is misconception that began immediately after the conquest by Europeans that the Aztecs, Maya and other peoples of Mesoamerica were savages. That concept arose to justify the destruction, looting and rape of their entire civilization—behind it was Spanish lust for treasure and religious zealots.
The fact they practiced human sacrifice was perhaps the most serious charge, ignoring the fact that many pagan European cultures did the same and the Romans in fact kicked their form of human sacrifice up to a high level by pitting untrained, ill-equipped people against savage beasts and professional warriors.
One way to judge the state of a culture is by looking at how complex their language was. Like the Egyptians, the Maya had a well developed written language based on hieroglyphics, a system of mathematics and were perhaps the finest astronomers of the ancient world, surpassing cultures such as the ancient Greeks, Persians, and Chinese who made studies of the sky.
The Maya produced tens of thousands of books, a recorded history of their entire civilization. What happened to these books and from clues left behind what I believe the books contained, will be discussed in the next blog.
The above is my co-author’s response to my original blog, which now follows:
Did the Maya have a serious scientific reason for their belief in a 2012 apocalypse?
The date they picked for their apocalypse is December 21, 2012. At that time our planet, moon and solar system will align with the heart of the galactic plane, in which scientists now know a supermassive black hole resides. The Maya viewed that black abyss—which they called “the Dark Rift”—as a kind of hell world, out of which the Black Tezcatlipoca would unleash the dark demons of everlasting night, which would then descend on the earth and annihilate humankind. This alignment only occurs once every 26,000 years, which closely approximates the combined duration of the five Mayan “Sun Ages.” I say “approximates” because the precise length of each of those “Sun Ages” is not known. They come to around 5200 years each, which would equal 26,000 years. In other words, the first “Sun Age” would have roughly coincided with the earth’s last alignment with the galaxy’s core. On 12/21/2012 at 11:11 PM Universal Time earth will experience its first galactic alignment in that 26,000 period. The Maya believed that date marks the end of the Fifth Sun Age.
They Maya also seemed to know—for reasons that are still unclear—that the Milky Way galaxy was a spiraling disk and that we orbited along its edge. We know this because the Mayan glyph for our Milky Way—which they sometimes called “The Tree of Life”—is a spinning disk.
I’m not suggesting the Maya viewed the universe exactly as we do or that they had our mathematical and the scientific sophistication—only that their vision of the 2012 apocalypse was based on closely studied astronomical observations and mathematical calculations as well as mystical divination.
I’ve done a lot of national radio and some TV for this book, and many people ask if extraterrestrial beings gave the Maya these unique insights. My answer is somewhat oblique. In the end the Maya could not have inferred these insights into our galaxy from their mathematics, science or from direct observation, and these insights imbued their hieroglyphic language, their religion and their life. They weren’t irrelevant, ephemeral observations. It seems to me they gained them either through a kind of preternatural revelation unimaginable to us or someone told them. I do not see a third alternative. I wish someone would come up with one.
I also do not see how we can dismiss out of hand their End-Time prophecy, if we cannot explain how they arrived their other uncanny perceptions about the nature of our galaxy.
The next series of blogs will discuss the historical and scientific basis of what I will call for convenience sake, the “Maya 2012 End Time Prophecy.” The conclusions reached after research and analysis surprised even me. I’ll start with this question: Did the Maya leave a written record revealing that a cosmic event will occur on December 21, 2012?
We need to first discuss why the Maya calendar date that equates to our date of December 21, 2012 has become a matter of concern as the date approached.
Basically, the Maya believed that the world around them suffered catastrophic events four times in the past and that the fifth such event would occur on the Winter Solstice, 2012 date. Rather incredibly, the events that they believed caused global annihilation in the past roughly mirror Biblical disasters such as the Flood and the cataclysmic destruction of ancient cities by fire from the sky and eruptions of the earth.
We also know from geological evidence that life on our planet was almost completely wiped out a number of times before recorded history. These events, such as mega volcanoes and asteroid and comet strikes, including ones the Maya would have knowledge of, will be discussed later.
It needs to be emphasized again that the Maya were a highly advanced and literate culture. This has to be important to keep in mind because there is misconception that began immediately after the conquest by Europeans that the Aztecs, Maya and other peoples of Mesoamerica were savages. That concept arose to justify the destruction, looting and rape of their entire civilization—behind it was Spanish lust for treasure and religious zealots.
The fact they practiced human sacrifice was perhaps the most serious charge, ignoring the fact that many pagan European cultures did the same and the Romans in fact kicked their form of human sacrifice up to a high level by pitting untrained, ill-equipped people against savage beasts and professional warriors.
One way to judge the state of a culture is by looking at how complex their language was. Like the Egyptians, the Maya had a well developed written language based on hieroglyphics, a system of mathematics and were perhaps the finest astronomers of the ancient world, surpassing cultures such as the ancient Greeks, Persians, and Chinese who made studies of the sky.
The Maya produced tens of thousands of books, a recorded history of their entire civilization. What happened to these books and from clues left behind what I believe the books contained, will be discussed in the next blog.
The above is my co-author’s response to my original blog, which now follows:
Did the Maya have a serious scientific reason for their belief in a 2012 apocalypse?
The date they picked for their apocalypse is December 21, 2012. At that time our planet, moon and solar system will align with the heart of the galactic plane, in which scientists now know a supermassive black hole resides. The Maya viewed that black abyss—which they called “the Dark Rift”—as a kind of hell world, out of which the Black Tezcatlipoca would unleash the dark demons of everlasting night, which would then descend on the earth and annihilate humankind. This alignment only occurs once every 26,000 years, which closely approximates the combined duration of the five Mayan “Sun Ages.” I say “approximates” because the precise length of each of those “Sun Ages” is not known. They come to around 5200 years each, which would equal 26,000 years. In other words, the first “Sun Age” would have roughly coincided with the earth’s last alignment with the galaxy’s core. On 12/21/2012 at 11:11 PM Universal Time earth will experience its first galactic alignment in that 26,000 period. The Maya believed that date marks the end of the Fifth Sun Age.
They Maya also seemed to know—for reasons that are still unclear—that the Milky Way galaxy was a spiraling disk and that we orbited along its edge. We know this because the Mayan glyph for our Milky Way—which they sometimes called “The Tree of Life”—is a spinning disk.
I’m not suggesting the Maya viewed the universe exactly as we do or that they had our mathematical and the scientific sophistication—only that their vision of the 2012 apocalypse was based on closely studied astronomical observations and mathematical calculations as well as mystical divination.
I’ve done a lot of national radio and some TV for this book, and many people ask if extraterrestrial beings gave the Maya these unique insights. My answer is somewhat oblique. In the end the Maya could not have inferred these insights into our galaxy from their mathematics, science or from direct observation, and these insights imbued their hieroglyphic language, their religion and their life. They weren’t irrelevant, ephemeral observations. It seems to me they gained them either through a kind of preternatural revelation unimaginable to us or someone told them. I do not see a third alternative. I wish someone would come up with one.
I also do not see how we can dismiss out of hand their End-Time prophecy, if we cannot explain how they arrived their other uncanny perceptions about the nature of our galaxy.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
If, for argument’s sake, these prophesies are wrong, are we wrong to brood about the world’s end?
Quite the contrary. As we have just observed, Planet Earth lives in a shooting gallery, its interior is a species-killing bomb waiting to detonate and humanity itself is capable of species-wide annihilation, including self-annihilation. We have enough nuclear weapons to destroy ourselves many times over, and the genetically-engineered plague viruses could also end civilization as we know it. We can never spend too much time planning for catastrophe-prevention and consequence-management.
Robert Heinlein said that “earth is too small and fragile a basket for humanity to put all its eggs in.” Many scientists have argued that for humanity to survive the next millennium, we must spread our species into space—onto other planets.
If nothing else, the Mayan prophesy of 2012 should be viewed as a profoundly important wake-up call, the ultimate cautionary tale.
Robert Heinlein said that “earth is too small and fragile a basket for humanity to put all its eggs in.” Many scientists have argued that for humanity to survive the next millennium, we must spread our species into space—onto other planets.
If nothing else, the Mayan prophesy of 2012 should be viewed as a profoundly important wake-up call, the ultimate cautionary tale.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
What could the Maya have known that we don’t?
The answer to that question goes back to the basic premise of how our universe operates:
Everything operates in a circle.
What goes around, comes around.
Which means that whatever they saw . . .
Will return!
-- Could the Mayans have discerned the nature of our 12/21/2012 cataclysm?
They could have conceivably witnessed a passing asteroid, whose approach we’re ignorant of, and surmised it would return and visit its violence on the earth on . . . 12/21/2012.
-- How would the Maya have viewed such a celestial visitor?
They say all celestial objects as gods, none of whom were benign in their attitudes toward humankind. Quetzalcoatl was viewed as the friendliest, but he was defeated and displaced in the heavens by a black god of the death and the everlasting night,Tezcatlipoca. The Maya believed that when the 2012 Long-Count Calendar ran out, Tezcatlipoca would smash the heavenly gates, that he and his infernal legions would scorch the Underworld Road which leads via the constellation, Sagittarius, and scourge the earth—and their final scorching scourge would be our Last Day, the One World’s Last Day . . . 12/21/2012.
Everything operates in a circle.
What goes around, comes around.
Which means that whatever they saw . . .
Will return!
-- Could the Mayans have discerned the nature of our 12/21/2012 cataclysm?
They could have conceivably witnessed a passing asteroid, whose approach we’re ignorant of, and surmised it would return and visit its violence on the earth on . . . 12/21/2012.
-- How would the Maya have viewed such a celestial visitor?
They say all celestial objects as gods, none of whom were benign in their attitudes toward humankind. Quetzalcoatl was viewed as the friendliest, but he was defeated and displaced in the heavens by a black god of the death and the everlasting night,Tezcatlipoca. The Maya believed that when the 2012 Long-Count Calendar ran out, Tezcatlipoca would smash the heavenly gates, that he and his infernal legions would scorch the Underworld Road which leads via the constellation, Sagittarius, and scourge the earth—and their final scorching scourge would be our Last Day, the One World’s Last Day . . . 12/21/2012.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
How knowledgeable were the Maya and their sister cultures?
The ancient Mesoamerica Maya-Azteca cultures were more advanced in the science of astronomy than their contemporaries in Europe and Asia. They even took astronomy into consideration how they laid out the core of their cities, placing buildings not just taking into consideration the four cardinal directions but placing obser
vatories strategically to study the sky.
No other ancient society recorded as accurate observations of celestial phenomena as the Maya (and later the Azteca) did, and they measured time with obsessively elaborate precision. Their Long-Count Calendar, which predicts our world will come to an end on 2012, was infinitely more advanced than anything the Old World had when Cortez conquered the Aztecs militarily in the 16th century.
-- Did their astronomical observations have a practical purpose?
In some regards, they did. In ancient times, the sky was an integral part of daily life – people looked to the sky not just to see whether they needed an umbrella, but for guidance on how to cross a sea, the route caravans took, when crops were to be planted and harvested, and even to predict future events.
vatories strategically to study the sky.
No other ancient society recorded as accurate observations of celestial phenomena as the Maya (and later the Azteca) did, and they measured time with obsessively elaborate precision. Their Long-Count Calendar, which predicts our world will come to an end on 2012, was infinitely more advanced than anything the Old World had when Cortez conquered the Aztecs militarily in the 16th century.
-- Did their astronomical observations have a practical purpose?
In some regards, they did. In ancient times, the sky was an integral part of daily life – people looked to the sky not just to see whether they needed an umbrella, but for guidance on how to cross a sea, the route caravans took, when crops were to be planted and harvested, and even to predict future events.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Is humankind more vulnerable to mass extinction that species from earlier periods?
Humanity is far more vulnerable to extinction events. In the past, life on the planet only had to worry about natural disasters. But when the dinosaurs passed, the mammals were able to rise, chief among them homo sapiens – a life form clever enough to be able to engineer its own mass extinction through nuclear weapons, chemically-induced climate change and genetically-engineered pandemics.
We must fear ourselves even more than natural catastrophes.
-- What do the Maya and the Toltecs in APOCALYPSE 2012 have to teach us about coping with global catastrophe?
The Maya faced and went through almost everything that our world is experiencing today, including religiously-motivated wars, climate change which produced the sorts of drought-driven food and water scarcity which now plagues Asia and Africa, particularly India. They faced internecine class conflict fueled by escalating inequities between the ruling and the laboring classes.
They faced the same tensions that many theocratic nations face today—the eternal conflict between science and religion. As drought ravaged their croplands, their religious/political leaders demanded not technological advances and organized efforts to improve food production and alleviate water scarcity but massive sacrifices of blood and treasure consecrated to their sky gods, including en masse human sacrifices. If the Mayans and their sister civilizations had put that effort into additional aqueducts, new irrigation systems and crop diversification, they might not have gone under. Instead they cut out hearts and hacked off heads.
We must fear ourselves even more than natural catastrophes.
-- What do the Maya and the Toltecs in APOCALYPSE 2012 have to teach us about coping with global catastrophe?
The Maya faced and went through almost everything that our world is experiencing today, including religiously-motivated wars, climate change which produced the sorts of drought-driven food and water scarcity which now plagues Asia and Africa, particularly India. They faced internecine class conflict fueled by escalating inequities between the ruling and the laboring classes.
They faced the same tensions that many theocratic nations face today—the eternal conflict between science and religion. As drought ravaged their croplands, their religious/political leaders demanded not technological advances and organized efforts to improve food production and alleviate water scarcity but massive sacrifices of blood and treasure consecrated to their sky gods, including en masse human sacrifices. If the Mayans and their sister civilizations had put that effort into additional aqueducts, new irrigation systems and crop diversification, they might not have gone under. Instead they cut out hearts and hacked off heads.
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