| From: Adam Gear | 2/03/99
20:13:25 |
| Subject: Mayan calendar. | post id:
2623 |
| Dear Karl, I was talking to some of my workmates at the poo farm about a show they saw the other night.They were telling me the Mayan calendar is the most accurate calendar in the world,going back 12000 years and it ends on the year 2012.Does this mean the world will end in 2012.But then again,some loonies reckon it will end in 2000 when all the planets line up.Any ideas would be appreciated. Kind Regards, Adam Gear. | |
| From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) | 2/03/99
21:36:56 |
| Subject: re: Mayan calendar. | post id:
2627 |
| ... They were
telling me the Mayan calendar is the most accurate calendar in the
world,going back 12000 years and it ends on the year 2012. Does this mean
the world will end in 2012. No, it means (i) the Mayans managed to find an accurate means of modelling the solar system before the Europeans, and (ii) they chose to cease their calculations (which would probably have been a painstaking and labourious process) before the year infinity (which seems pretty sensible to me). I often find it curious, the reactions from many individuals (usually New Age'ers) of European influence, when they discover that the Europeans were not the only people in the world to have investigated the nature of the Universe with some quantifiable success. Interestingly, they often attribute such success to external influences like aliens. I wonder if they ever stop to ponder the idea that in fact non-European civilisations might not be abjectly intellectually inferior to European civilisations. I actually do not know if the Mayan calendar is in fact accurate for the 12000 years claimed, but if it is true then I find it very impressive, but NOT astounding. At any rate, they had to stop somewhere, didn't they. Soupie twist, Ed G.  | |
| From: James Richmond (Avatar) | 2/03/99
21:52:30 |
| Subject: re: Mayan calendar. | post id:
2631 |
| The Mayan people used three
different calendar systems. The tzolkin (sacred) calendar had a
cycle of 260 days, the haab (civil) calendar a cycle of 365 days.
The third calendar was known as the long count. The first two systems were combined to produce a cycle called a calendar round, which had 18,980 days, or about 52 years. To distinguish dates separated by more than this period, the Maya used the long count system, which allowed them to uniquely specify dates within a period of 1,872,000 days (about 5,125 solar years). The somewhat odd numbers of days specified in each system came about due to the use of a modified vigesimal (base 20) number system. A kin was a day; a uinal was 20 kins; a tun was 18 uinals; a katun was 20 tuns and a baktun was 20 katuns. A long count date was specified as a string of 5 "digits" in this system in order baktuns.katuns.tuns.uinals.kins and could be interpreted as a number of days from a specified start date 0.0.0.0.0 No long count dates greater than 13.0.0.0.0 are mentioned in Mayan inscriptions or writings. Many scholars think that this date marks the beginning of a new great cycle or Mayan era. Perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps not, there were 13 Mayan gods. One difficult problem has been in determining what day the Mayan 0.0.0.0.0 corresponds to in our calendar. There have been many estimates spanning dates over an 800 year period, but the current consensus seems to be that 0.0.0.0.0 was 11 August, 3114 B.C. This means that the next great cycle will start on 21 December, 2012 A.D. The Mayan calendar was not notably more accurate than the calendars of other civilisations which existed at the same time. The haab cycle was chosen to have 365 days probably because this was the closest integral number of days to the solar year (365.2422 years). For comparison, our present calendar uses a system which gives an average year length of 365.2425 days. Why pick 3114 B.C. as the year to start the calendar? After all, it is unlikely that the Maya existed at the time. It is possible that the Maya were quite good astronomers and worked out an approximate date that all the visible planets were in conjunction. One such date was 17-18 Feb, 3100 B.C. They appear to have been a little off in their calculations. The final question to ask is: why should we expect the world to end on 21 December, 2012? This date seems pretty arbitrary in that it results from the particular way the Maya constructed their calendar system. It is possible, of course, that they had some special knowledge about the end of the world, but as far as I know, no Mayan writings say or imply that the world will end when 13.0.0.0.0 rolls around. It is just a convenient date to start counting again from 0.0.0.0.0, and sufficiently far in the Mayan future for no-one to have to worry about any Y0.0.0.0.0k bugs! | |