2012, here we come!

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, false prophets, debunking, mesoamerica

At least once per generation, since there have been Europeans in North America, members of one group or other have donned special clothing (white robes are popular), gone to a special place such as a hilltop, perhaps given away many of their possessions, and waited for a savior, or a spaceship, or the end of the world. Apocalyptic, millennial beliefs undergird American life.

While these oddities are usually carried on by small groups, sometimes apocalyptic fervor grips the entire nation, infiltrating all of popular culture. Not so long ago, the "big fear" was an asteroid hit, and two 1998 films, Deep Impact and Armageddon, made millions of dollars as millions of our fellow citizens flocked to the theaters to see them. Just a few years earlier, over about a decade, the Left Behind book series raged through like a twelve-stroke battering ram.

Now, we are told, in just over two years, we all face extinction or extermination or at least the loss of our pensions, when the Maya calendar runs out on December 21, 2012 (or maybe two days later…). The popular movie 2012 has again made millions for a crafty few. Now a professor of History, a Mayanist, has published a book with a different view. Disclaimer: The author is a relative of mine.

What did the Maya of eight centuries ago expect to happen when calendar date 13.0.0.0.0 rolled around? In 2012: Science & Prophecy of the Ancient Maya by Mark Van Stone, we find that the simple answer is, not much, depending on how good a party you throw to mark the occasion. If we notated time the way the Maya did, our last "great occasion" would have been shown as 20.0.0.1.1, but instead we showed it as 2000/1/1 or January 1, 2000. Then we quibbled for months over whether the real beginning of the 21^st Century was 2001/1/1. There was a real threat of apocalyptic troubles with the "Y2k problem" in computer systems, but computer programmers worldwide met that threat and the new Century began with hardly a ripple.

The book is composed of 34 essays, many of them interlinked in series, and eight Appendices, including a very informative FAQ that summarizes the author's points. This means you can read the book in any order, and it makes a good reference work. While the main message of the book is the debunking of apocalyptic speculation, it contains a wealth of information about what the Maya were really interested in, which was (is this any surprise?) appeasing the gods so they could all have a better life. The unique feature of Maya religious practice was that the shedding of blood was frequently performed by the religious and political leaders upon themselves! You'll have to read the book to find out where they'd stick the knife, but, gentlemen, be prepared to be squeamish. Anyway, despite depictions of the Maya as bloodthirsty purveyors of human sacrifice, that title goes to the later Aztecs, who did indeed sacrifice a few ten thousands of victims yearly. Maya sacrifices seldom resulted in death.

I find it more fascinating to learn what the Maya believed and practiced; what was really important to them. The precession of the equinoxes was not important to them, so although they measured it, they didn't account for it, and kept a 365-day year. They didn't even bother with a Julian-type "leap year" correction. They were much more interested in the 260-day period between apparitions of Venus, and how it related to a 360-day near-year with an 18:13 ratio. The special dates upon which they liked to perform coronations and special religious observances were chosen by a complex system of numerology with these factors plus small prime numbers (if you consider 273 a "small prime"). Appendix 5 contains a two-page list of "important" time periods ranging from two days to 9,504,000 days (composed of 6×11×20×20×360). This last period is more than 26,000 years, and is a pretty good match to the "grand round" of the precession of the equinoxes. This partly explains why the text depicting the date of an event in an inscription can take up more space than the recounting of the event itself.

But not all their symbols were numerical. In common with many cultures, they revered a "world tree", which was shown in many ways, such as the two shown here, along with the caption from the book (p. 99; click for a more readable image):

On the left, the tree is a fruiting cactus, rooted in a woman's skeleton and serving as a perch for a great eagle with flint-tipped feathers. On the right a pregnant tree (a very common image) is giving birth, while its root is a woman's head, as two gods assist (it is a caesarian birth). Mayan religious symbolism was much more variable than what we are familiar with, though a perusal of the stained-glass windows of three or four cathedrals reveals plenty of variation, and that is in just one Christian sect. Sometimes the eagle holds a snake in its beak, which led, via the Aztecs, to the modern seal of Mexico, seen on its flag:

The eagle grips a snake with beak and talon, standing on a fruiting cactus that grows from a bone-like pedestal standing in water. This is a clear creation-legend image. The oak and laurel leaf clusters are a symbol of sovereignty added in modern times. This image also adorns the back of Mexican coins.

If we anointed astronomers and geologists for priests, we, too might find our national consciousness grasping time periods ranging into thousands and millions of years. Instead, we get antsy waiting 60 seconds for the microwave to heat up a sandwich, and the second-most common traffic offense is running a red light, often by someone who already sat there for one whole minute while traffic cleared, and can't stand to wait another half minute for the light to "get around to changing" (the most common offense is speeding).

So how ought we prepare ourselves for Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0? Be nice to people. Forgive you brother for what he said last year. Live like the world really could end, but don't liquidate your long-term investments!