Our Cosmic Ancestors (8 page)

The Mayas celebrated in a very original way, the meeting of 73 sacred years with 52 profane years. They extinguished all the fires in the household, smashed all the pots and pans in the kitchen, and sat up all night long in fear and trepidation that the end of the world might be there and that they might never see the Sun again. When nevertheless the Sun rose again in the morning and the Mayas had to acknowledge that the world was still there, they relit their fires and sacrificed a few virgins and prisoners and went back happily to enjoy life for another 52 years. Evidently, every 104 years, when the planets Mercury and Venus were in conjunction with the Sun, and especially every 312 years, when Mars joined the group, the celebration was even bigger and the number of virgins and prisoners sacrificed was substantially increased.

To compute long periods of time and to make astronomical calculations, the Mayas used a calendar that was based on the Great Cycle
- a period of time that was not precisely known to our scientists. It was vaguely thought that the last cycle had started about 3,000 years before Christ. It was also thought that this cycle had to run out soon. Finally, it was assumed that this long span was divided in cycles a little shorter than twenty years each. For this very scant knowledge we have to thank the bishop of Yucatan, Diego de Landa, who in 1549 ordered all the ancient Mayan documents and manuscripts to be publicly burned because he could not understand these treasures. To him they were the work of Satan.

Anyone who wants to tackle the mystery of the Mayan calendar today has to solve three different problems: the staffing date of this calendar, the length of the time span this calendar covered, and the duration of its short cycles. Opinions on all three questions differ widely. Originally, the dates proposed for the start of this long calendar were as much as 520 years apart. Recently this discrepancy has been reduced to 260 years and there are only two groups of American archaeologists who dispute each other. The team led by Herbert Spinden maintains that the long Mayan calendar started in 3373 BC. The team led by Edward Thompson thinks it began in 3113 BC. As the Mayas counted time, this 260 year difference represents thirteen periods of 20 years each that are called 'katuns'. Twenty katuns, or 400 years, are equal to one 'baktun'.

The duration of the Mayan long calendar was accepted by the archaeologists with good reason to be 5,200 years, or 260 times 20 years, because the scientists were well aware of the fact that for the Mayas the numbers 13, 26, and 260 were very important. The short cycle, as everybody thought, had to be about 19.75 years, but nobody could explain why it had to be a number that does not correspond to any of the cyclic motions of either the Sun, the Moon, or any known planet or comet.

When the radiocarbon dating method was introduced, the archaeologists were sure that in no time all the mysteries of the Mayan calendar would be solved. Carbon dating seemed tailor-made for this purpose because all Mayan temples had heavy wooden beams made from a tree called 'sapodilla', which has a rich latex content and does not rot. Also insects do not affect this evergreen which is now cultivated to produce chicle, the main ingredient of chewing gum. Furthermore, all inscriptions on Mayan temples mark the exact date according to the Mayan calendar when they were built.

The Mayas used the vigesimal counting by 20, with a dash and dot system. The numbers were represented by an eye that had the value of zero, a dot that counted for 1, and a dash that counted for 5. As the carbon-dating system was thought to be at that time very reliable, all that supposedly had to be done to bring our calendar and the unknown Mayan calendar into accord was to take a sliver of
sapodilla wood from the beam of the temple, find out by its radioactive carbon content how old it was, and then compare its age with the inscribed Mayan date on the lintel of the temple.

In the middle of the tropical jungle of Guatemala stands the magnificent Mayan temple of Tikal built in a year indicated thus: one dash four dots three dashes two dashes one eye and one more eye - which in our numbers would mean 9 15 10 0 0 or the Mayan year nine baktuns, fifteen katuns, ten tuns, zero months, zero days, or about 3,900 of our years since the last start of the Mayan long calendar.

The Spinden team estimated this date to be AD 481, but the Thompson team insisted that it was the year AD 741. Carbon dating was to resolve the dispute and everybody went down to Tikal to obtain fresh samples of the old temple lintel for the laboratory where it was to be tested by the newest, most precise methods of radiocarbon dating.

The first results obtained from burning the Tikal sapodilla slivers indicated that the Spinden group was right, but later tests with a greater number of samples proved finally that the Thompson group was the winner. All were satisfied because each team had won one set of the match, but the mystery of the Mayan calendar was not solved. As we will see later on, the real winner was the Thompson team that came very close to the right answer - the year 739 or two years less than 741 that they had proposed.

The most amusing aspect was that this astonishingly precise prediction was obtained from a wrong starting date and a wrong short cycle. A similar case in history is the precise calculation by Eratosthenes of Alexandria who 2,200 years ago established the circumference of our planet by using two wrong values whose errors cancelled each other and thus yielded the right answer.

I had long been intrigued by the mysteries of the Mayan calendar but never had the time to take a closer look. Then, after a dinner date in Paris with a French specialist in Mayan culture, I decided to try the impossible. I knew that the Mayas, like the Sumerians, were great astronomers and I had long suspected the two cultures had something in common.
The Mayas also knew of the precession of the equinoxes and the existence of Uranus and Neptune. They had calculated the periods of revolution and conjunction of different planets and discovered, as I already mentioned, some equivalent astronomical cycles, such as 65 revolutions of Venus which are equal to 104 solar years, or 327 revolutions of Mercury. They also used the cycle of 33,968 days to predict eclipses, and this cycle was equal to 5 lunar precessions, 93 solar years, 196 eclipses, and 1,150 lunar months. We will look at these figures later once more. Meanwhile, the Mayas had also discovered a cycle of 1,886,040 days that represented exactly 260 conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, 2,310 of Mars and Jupiter, 2,418 of Earth and Mars, and 3,230 of Earth and Venus.

This particular cycle was the key to the mystery of the Mayan calendar. It was based on the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, something nobody had cared to consider. All other periods of sidereal or synodic revolution of all planets had been tried, but somehow nobody had tested the conjunctions between the planets.

Mayan astronomical calendar from 3144 BC to AD 2020
Mayan Great Cycle of 260 katuns or 5163 years
baktuns
0
1 2
3 4 6 6 7 8 9
10 11 12

⁰
3144 2747 2350 1953 1555 1158 0761 0364 0034 0431 0828 1226 1623
1 3124 2727 2330 1933 1536 1138 0741 0344 0054 0451 0848 1245 1643
₂
3104 2707 2310 1913 1516 1119 0721 0324 0074 0471 0868 1265 1662
3 3084 2687 2290 1893 1496 1099 0702 0304 0094 0491 0888 1285 1682
4
3065 2667 2270
1873 1476 1079 0682 0285 0114 0511 0908 1305 1702
5 3045 2648 2250 1853 1456 1059 0662 0265 0133 0531 0928 1325 1722
6 3025 2628 2231 1833 1436 1039 0642 0245 0153 0550 0948 1345 1742
7 3005
2608 2211 1814 1416 1019 0622 0225 0173 0570 0967 1365 1762
8 2985 2588 2191 1794 1397 0999 0602 0205 0193 0590 0987 1384 1782
9 2965 2568 2171 1774 1377 0980 0582 0185 0213 0610 1007 1404 1801
Katuns 10 2945 2548 2151 1754 1357 0960 0563 0165 0233 0630 1027 1424 1821
11 2926 2528 2131 1734 1337 0940 0543 0146 0253 0650 1047 1444 1841
12 2906 2509 2111 1714 1317 0920 0523 0126 0272 0670 1067 1464 1861
₁₃
2886 2489 2092 1694 1297 0900 0503 0106 0292 0689 1087 1484 1881
14 2866 2469 2072 1675 1277 0880 0483 0086 0312 0709 1106 1504 1901
15 2846 2449 2052 1655 1258 0860 0463 0066 0332 0729 1126 1523 1921
16 2826 2429 2032 1635 1238 0841 0443 0046 0352 0749 1146 1543 1940
17 2806 2409 2012 1615 1218 0821 0424 0026 0372 0769 1166 1563 1660
18 2787 2389 1992 1595 1198 0801 0404 0007 0392 0789 1186 1583 1980
19 2767 2370 1972 1575 1178 0781 0384 0014 0411 0809 1206 1603 2000
20 2747 2350 1953 1555 1158 0761 0364 0034 0431 0828 1226 1623 2020

This Mayan calendar of 1.886.040 days was based on 260 conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, which occur every 7.254 days. It was divided into 13 baktuns of 20 katuns each. as well as into 7.254 sacred yea's of 260 days or 5.239 calendar years of 360 days. Each baktun also represented 186 synodic revolutions of Mars or 5.310 sidereal revolutions of the Moon.

The conjunction period of Jupiter and Saturn is actually 7,253.445 days, but the rounded-out Mayan value of 7,254 days is valid because they did not use decimal parts and counted in whole days only. So the Great Cycle of 260 Mayan conjunctions was 1,886,040 days, or 5,163.8 of our years.

I finally discovered that the Mayan chronology was based on several Great Cycles of 5,163 years, or 260 conjunctions each, counted in succession. Once the duration and the rhythm of the Great Cycle was established, it was not difficult to find the starting point of the Mayan calendar. ! presumed that at the start of the last Great Cycle some remarkable astronomic phenomenon must have occurred. The joint arrival of four planets in the same corner of the sky, the meeting of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, takes place every, 4627 years after each of the planets has finished an exact number of conjunctions and is again lined up with the others. And the last time such a phenomenon took place was the year 1484 of the Christian era.

Stepping now 4,627 years back, I marked the year 3,144 BC and took three more times the same cycle of 5,163 years to arrive at the date 18,633 BC, a date only three years off of the year 18,630 BC mentioned as an important date in a sacred Mayan codex preserved in the Vatican. For me that constitutes proof. Also, if my calculations are reasonably accurate, some other quite rare astronomical occurrence took place in the skies over the Mayan temples in that year -a double eclipse of the Sun and of the Moon during the same year. The exact dates were 23 November for the eclipse of the Sun and 3 June for that of the Moon.

When I also discovered that the count of days in each sacred year was 260, the same number as katuns in the Great Cycle, all of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle began to fall into place. For the Mayas the katun of 7,254 days was not only a measure of time but also an astronomical unit to express the synodic periods of revolution of planets, or the count of days needed for each planet to be aligned with the Sun and the Earth. For example, 5 katuns were equal to 313 revolutions of Mercury, 13 katuns were equal to 121 revolutions of Mars, or 27 katuns were equal to 7 returns of Halley's comet.

It seems that, like the Sumerians, the Mayas were familiar with the constant of Nineveh - but in another form. .their time was counted in days, not seconds. For years the professional archaeologists searching the ruins of the Mayan temples had found fantastically high numbers engraved in stone. These numbers corresponded to millions of years or billions of days, while the officially recognized age of mankind, according to scientists of that time, was only 6,000 years - one reason why the gigantic numbers meant nothing to those early archaeologists and were simply dismissed. Many years later a courageous author suggested that one of these mysterious numbers represented a cycle of 23,040 millions of days, or 64 millions of Mayan years of 360 days each, called an `alautun'. But still nobody paid any attention, and the huge Mayan numbers were forgotten once more.

The date of this Mayan Disc of Chinkultic had been estimated as AD 587 but it could be much older. It actually shows, since the origin of the calendar, an elapsed time of 11 days, 14 months,
12 years, 17 katuns, 7 baktuns, and 9 Great Cycles. That seems to indicate the year 14 BC for the disc and the year 49,611 BC for the origin of the Mayan calendar. After all, it is only 1 baktun before the start of the Egyptian calendar in 49,214 BC.