Effigy (31 page)

“Well,” Lori said, “the Mayans did adopt the Calendar Round from the Toltecs. I’m sure they could have adopted other cultural aspects too.”

John shook his head. “There’s much more to it than that. The evidence strongly suggests a tremendous Mayan-Toltec convergence in the
Yucatan
near the end of the tenth century AD. Now it’s not entirely clear why the Toltecs suddenly migrated there but I’ve an idea it may be the same reason
Teotihuacan
was abandoned by AD 700.”

“And that reason being?”

“Precession.”

John caught the baffled glance shared between Lori and Eva. Derek must have read their confusion too, for he quickly explained, “Precession is basically the wobble in the earth’s axis which causes the positions of the stars to shift over time.”

“Precisely,” John said. “In the case of
Teotihuacan
, I’m sure the people realized over time that their great city had fallen out of alignment with the Pleiades. Their earthly alignment with the heavens had gone askew. So, perhaps the people moved on, looking for a true cosmic center.”

“Which the Toltecs found in
Chichen Itza
,” Lori added.

John nodded. “You see, while the Toltecs concerned themselves with the Pleiades and Quetzalcoatl’s rattle, the Mayans were watching the other side of the sky. They were concerned with the dark rift within the bulge of the Milky Way. I believe when these two cultures merged in
Chichen Itza
, they realized that they were both searching the skies for essentially the same thing—a cosmic center. When the Toltecs adjusted their calendars for their new latitudinal position, they must have realized they and the Mayans were tracking the same thing.”

“And that is?”

“The ages of the world.”

“Which is about to shift to Quetzalcoatl,” Lori mused. “Who will sit in the throne above
Chichen Itza
.”

“It would appear the Toltecs found their cosmic center,” John agreed.

The room fell silent while his words found weight in everyone’s minds.

“So the Mesoamericans were anticipating the Age of Quetzalcoatl as far back as a thousand years ago, or more,” Peet suggested.

John nodded. “The feathered serpent certainly dominated Mesoamerican art. Even the Pyramid of Kukulcan was constructed in Quetzalcoatl’s honor. Kukulcan, after all, is the Mayan translation for Quetzalcoatl.”

“And the snake’s shadow appearing on the pyramid during the March equinox pays tribute to Quetzalcoatl,” Lori added, her eyes glowing again.

John snapped his fingers. He liked the way her mind worked. “Not just a tribute, but an announcement, declaring the approach of a new age which will begin a full sixty days after this year’s spring equinox!”

Derek shook his head, his own excitement restrained. “All this means to me is that the Pleiades will meet the sun over
Chichen Itza
three days before the Pleiades pass over
Teotihuacan
. And it’s going to be that way for another two hundred years. How did the Toltecs know that May 20th of
this year
 
is the true start date of the Age of Quetzalcoatl?”

John smiled and turned the cell phone around to give Derek full view of the screen. “Because in the year 2012, not only does the sun conjunct with the Pleiades over the Pyramid of Kukulkan, the moon will be there too.”

Lori studied him intensely. “You mean…”

John’s lips spontaneously widened into a smile. “This year, there’s going to be an eclipse.”

PART V

Sunday, May 20, 2012

“When yet no sun had shone and no dawn had broken, it is said, the gods gathered themselves together and took counsel among themselves there at Teotihuacan.”

Fray Bernardino De Sahagún,
Florentine Codex

New Fire

The brightness of the morning sun filled quickly over the plaza of the Agave Azul, receding the rain puddles to shallow cracks between the stones paving the walk. There was something sparkling about the morning after a rain. It had a way of refreshing the senses, aided considerably by breakfast flavors of a new land.

At least that’s what Lori thought as she nibbled on slices of fresh mango and jicama rubbed in lime and chili powder. As usual, she’d awakened early, and while she waited for the others from a chair nestled within a patch of morning sunlight falling through the hacienda facade, a cheery woman scurrying about the hotel brought her a curious cup of warm atole from the taqueria, another piece of
Mexico
to savor.

The morning quickly shed its charm, however, when Dr. Friedman approached with a Styrofoam cooler filled with ice and bottled water.

“It gets hot in
Teotihuacan
,” he said. “We’ll need water if we remain the entire day.”

That was all that was needed to snap Lori back to the long mission ahead. She’d taken heed to the professor’s words and dressed accordingly. She liked working in the heat and was glad she’d packed her favorite pair of khakis with their boxy thigh pockets, and a tank top which she now layered beneath a white, long-sleeved cotton shirt to ward off the chill of the early Mexican morning.

Strange how little events lead to new experiences. Lori had never been to
Mexico
before and yet, it wasn’t long before she was in the middle of the crowded back seat of Derek’s rental car barreling seventy miles an hour down MEX 132. Patches of civilization alternated with plots of corn and desert plunging toward the windshield in front of Derek and Dr. Friedman in the front seats. Somewhere ahead lay the ancient ruins of
Teotihuacan
and Lori marveled over the fact that she wouldn’t have been within a thousand miles of any of this had it not been for the stone etching of The Trader.

That single petroglyph baking beneath the
Chaco
sun had been the catalyst of it all. Had Lori not seen Dr. Peet’s one-of-a-kind discovery and the pot hunter’s pit just beneath it, she may have never found anything significant about the second petroglyph in
Utah
. She doubted she would have ever thought to dig within that particular alcove on her father’s ranch and therefore would certainly not have found the effigy buried within The Trader’s grave. It was The Trader that had opened the door to the effigy and now, because of the artifact’s theft, Lori found herself in Mexico wondering how such a blur of events could have landed her so deep in a foreign country.

She anticipated her first glimpse of
Teotihuacan
. Her curiosity couldn’t wait to see those pyramids that once aligned with the stars and her imagination toyed with the idea of
Chichen Itza
’s solar eclipse only hours away. A fascinating answer that, in typical archaeological fashion, only presented more questions.

If the cosmological event that announced the arrival of the new age was about to be witnessed in
Chichen Itza
, why didn’t Shaman Gaspar take the effigy there? Why did he come to
Teotihuacan
instead?

Eva was staring out of the car window when Derek turned off the toll highway. The landscape had opened up, but it wasn’t the desert scrub land that held her attention, Lori noted. Nor was Eva searching the horizon for ancient archaeological ruins. She was looking up toward the cloudless sky.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” she said, almost to herself. “If the Pleiades are supposed to be up there right now, how would the Toltecs have ever known? They couldn’t have seen those stars in the daytime.”

Eva had a point. To the naked eye only the moon was large enough to draw attention whenever its path crossed the face of the sun. Anything smaller, like the Pleiades, was blotted out by the sun’s intense light.

“It does seem like the Toltecs were celebrating an event they couldn’t even see,” Lori concurred.

Dr. Peet smiled. “Isn’t that the basis for most religions?” he asked.

He too had chosen his field clothes for the day, exchanging his slacks for a pair of jeans and his leather shoes for his Gore-Tex boots. He’d even thrown on his light-weight, chest-pocketed safari vest, and a weathered hat. But Lori and Dr. Peet weren’t the only ones who’d dressed for an outdoor excursion. Even Dr. Friedman abandoned his travel tie for an airy polo shirt and covered his silver head with a straw Panama hat.

“So they just had faith the Pleiades were up there?” Lori asked.

“Not entirely,” Dr. Friedman said. “The Toltecs were marvelous astronomers. By tracking the Pleiades movements at night, they could easily calculate their position during the day. In fact, I believe Mr. Gaspar may have still been tracking the Pleiades in this way.”

“How do you figure?” Derek asked.

“You mentioned that Mr. Gaspar went down to
Chichen Itza
last November. Was it by chance on November 18th?”

Derek thought a moment. “That sounds about right.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Eva asked.

Dr. Friedman adjusted his glasses. “November 18th is the binary opposite of May 20th. That is to say, the two dates are precisely six months apart. So if the Pleiades crossed the zenith above
Chichen Itza
at midnight on November 18th, then—”

“They’ll cross the zenith at noon on May 20th,” Lori interrupted.

“Precisely.”

Lori straightened in her seat. “As I recall, the Hopi were interested in the November night sky too. The way I understand it, they were watching the Orion constellation, but if the Pleiades are nearby, maybe they were watching them too.”

Dr. Peet was nodding. “The Pleiades were central to the Hopi Wuwuchim Ceremony, which was initiated by drilling a fire on a turquoise disk.”

Dr. Friedman shifted in his seat to get a better view of his audience sitting behind him. “Similarly, the Toltecs marked the midnight zenith passage of the Pleiades with the New Fire Ceremony.”

“And that would be...” Derek asked as he slowed the car down. The pavement came to an abrupt end and the tires crunched onto a gravel road. The triangular peaks of two gray pyramids broke the horizon ahead.

“The New Fire was an ancient ceremony based upon the fifty-two year Calendar Round. Fray Bernardo de Sahagún documented the ceremony as it was performed by the Aztecs during the time of the conquest. According to Sahagún’s report, at the end of the fifty-two year cycle of the Calendar Round, there was intense turmoil among the people that the world was coming to an end and would surely do so if the Pleiades failed to cross the zenith precisely at midnight.”

“And if they did?” Lori asked.

“Then at the moment the Pleiades hung directly overhead, the priests would cut out the heart of a their chosen sacrifice and burn it in the sacred New Fire drilled from the sunstone, thus guaranteeing that the world would continue for another fifty-two years.”