A newly
discovered Mayan text reveals the "end date"
for the Mayan
calendar, becoming only the second
known document to do so. But unlike some
modern people, ancient
Maya did not expect the world to
end on that date, researchers said.
"This text
talks about ancient political history rather
than prophecy," Marcello
Canuto, the director of Tulane University
Middle America Research Institute,
said in a statement. "This new evidence
suggests that the 13 bak'tun date was an important
calendrical event that would have
been celebrated by the
ancient Maya; however, they make no
apocalyptic prophecies whatsoever regarding
the date."
The Mayan Long
Count calendar is divided into
bak'tuns, or 144,000-day cycles that begin at
the Maya creation date. The winter solstice of
2012 (Dec. 21) is the last day of the 13th
bak'tun, marking what the Maya people would
have seen as a full cycle of creation.
New Age
believers and doomsday types have attributed
great meaning to the Dec. 21, 2012 date,
with some
predicting an apocalypse and others
some sort of profound global spiritual event.
But only one archaeological reference to the
2012 date had ever been found, as an
inscription on a monument dating back to
around A.D. 669 in Tortuguero, Mexico. [End of the
World? Top Doomsday Fears]
Now,
researchers exploring the Mayan ruins of La Corona in Guatemala have
unearthed a second reference. On a stairway
block carved with hieroglyphs, archaeologists
found a commemoration of a visit by Yuknoom
Yich'aak K'ahk' of Calakmul, the most powerful
Mayan ruler in his day. The king, also known
as Jaguar
Paw, suffered a terrible defeat in
battle by the Kingdom of Tikal in 695.
Historians
have long assumed that Jaguar Paw died or was
captured in this battle. But the carvings
proved them wrong. In fact, the king visited
La Corona in A.D. 696, probably trying to
shore up loyalty among his subjects in the
wake of his defeat four years earlier. [See images of
the carvings]
As part of
this publicity tour, the king was calling
himself the "13 k'atun lord," the carvings
reveal. K'atuns are another unit of the Maya
calendar, corresponding to 7,200 days or
nearly 20 years. Jaguar Paw had presided over
the ending of the 13th of these k'atuns in
A.D. 692.
That's where
the 2012 calendar end date comes in. In an
effort to tie himself and his reign to the
future, the king linked his reign with another
13th cycle — the 13th bak'tun of Dec. 21,
2012.
"What this
text shows us is that in times of crisis, the
ancient Maya used their calendar to promote
continuity and stability rather than predict
apocalypse," Canuto said.
La Corona
was the site of much looting and has only been
explored by modern archaeologists for about 15
years. Canuto and his dig co-director Tomas
Barrientos Q. of the Universidad del Valle de
Guatemala announced the discovery of the new
calendar text Thursday (June 28) at the
National Palace in Guatemala.
The
researchers first uncovered the carved
stone steps in 2010 near a building
heavily damaged by looters. The robbers had
missed this set of 12 steps, however,
providing a rare example of stones still in
their original places. The researchers found
another 10 stones from the staircase that had
been moved but then discarded by looters. In
total, these 22 stones boast 264 hieroglyphs
tracing the political history of La Corona,
making them the longest known ancient Maya
text in Guatemala.