According to the Gregorian calendar, it is 2012. Now that we have entered the year of the end of all things, at least according to some, it behooves us to be as accurate as possible. And it now appears that the calculations regarding the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar could be off by a number of days.
According to a number of doomsday prognosticators, the world is supposed to come to an end on December 21, 2012. They base that date on the calculated end of the Mayan calendar, which reaches the end of its Long Count cycle on that date. Or it did when certain events were used as guidemarks. But a study by University of California -- Santa Barbara associate professor Gerardo Aldana has called into question the accuracy of an important guide marker, thus questioning also the end date of the Long Count calendar.
By extension, the calendrical end date of Dec. 21, 2012, might be off by as much as sixty days. A wrong end of the world date could prove problematic for those whose calculations have worked out to the day of the 2012 winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.
Not that the Mayans ever predicted the world would end. It is simply the end of their Long Count calendar. Presumably, another Long Count would begin on Dec. 22. The end of the world distortions of the Mayan calendar, often coupled with interpretations of the Mayan pictographic book known as the Dresden Codex, over time have led to prophecies and tie-ins with potential astronomical anomalies, conspiracy theories, pseudo-Christian teachings, and the writings of Nostradamus.
And those doomsday prophecies could be off by as many as sixty days...
According to Aldana, one of the guiding events used to correlate the Mayan calendar with the Gregorian calendar, which is done by using the correlation factor known as the "GMT constant," might not be what it has been interpreted to be. He explains in the book Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World that one of the events in question is the appearance of a heavenly body called "Chak Ek'," which has been used to set the date of an important battle in Mayan history. Although Chak Ek' has been translated as the planet Venus, Aldana believes it is actually a meteor.
As Aldana explained, although Venus is an astronomical entity which can be calculated with great precision, a meteor's appearance would be an altogether different matter. Since the GMT constant is based on the Dresden Codex Venus Table, he noted that it made the interpretation of Chak Ek' questionable, throwing all the GMT dates into question. Destabilizing it, he said.
And it could throw off the end date of the Long Count calendar by some sixty days...
"Astronomy had been considered in the past, but none had put the emphasis on the Venus Table as much as [Floyd] Lounsbury [whose work on the Dresden Codex resulted in the Venus Table] did," explained the UC - Santa Barbara professor. "As I demonstrate in the article, he took the position that his work removed the last obstacle to fully accepting the GMT constant. Others took his work even further, suggesting that he had proven the GMT constant to be correct. Because of its convenience for specific types of research, et cetera, the acceptance of the GMT in scholarly circles today is very close to unanimous."
Still, for those whose hearts -- and minds -- are set on the world coming to an end on Dec. 21 or sometime in the year 2012, there are still all those Nostradamus centuries, that ghost planet Nibiru, or the worst solar storm in two decades that could bring about the doomsday scenario they desire. There is also the chance that there could be an eruption of a supervolcano that would end life as we know it. Or some man-made disaster, such as a biological catastrophe or a nuclear war. Or perhaps even a massive pandemic. And, of course, there is always the very real possibility that an extremely large meteoroid could suddenly appear from deep space and crash into the Earth.
But anticipating the end of days to occur on a certain date, especially a date derived from the use of archaic pictographs and calendars and an attempt to find a correlation with the modern calendrical system, might demand quite a bit of faith in the interpretation of an ancient text.
***** It should be noted -- for clarity -- the Maya calendar is not inaccurate. It is a very precise measuring metric. The dates calculated using it, however, could be inaccurate. This would be rectified by a realignment of known dates.
(photo credit: Guzman m, Wikimedia Commons)
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