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The End of Time: the Maya Mystery of 2012

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The End of Time: the Maya Mystery of 2012 THE END OF TIME ALSO BY ANTHONY AVENI Ancient Astronomers Behind the Crystal Ball: Magic, Science and the Occult from Antiquity Through the New Age Between the Lines: The Mystery of the Giant Ground Drawings of Ancient Nasca, Peru The Book of the Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays Conversing with the Planets: How Science and Myth Invented the Cosmos Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks and Cultures The First Americans: Where They Came From and Who They Became Foundations of New World Cultural Astronomy The Madrid Codex: New Approaches to Understanding an Ancient Maya Manuscript (with G. Vail) Nasca: Eighth Wonder of the World Skywatchers: A Revised and Updated Version of Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico Stairways to the Stars: Skywatching in Three Great Ancient Cultures Uncommon Sense: Understanding Nature’s Truths Across Time and Culture THE END OF TIME T H E Ma Y A M YS T ERY O F 2012 AN T H O N Y A V E N I UNIVERSI T Y PRESS OF COLOR A DO For Dylan © 2009 by Anthony Aveni Published by the University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aveni, Anthony F. The end of time : the Maya mystery of 2012 / Anthony Aveni. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-87081-961-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. End of the world (Astronomy) 2. Maya calendar. I. Title. QB638.8.A94 2009 001.9—dc22 2009023097 Design by Daniel Pratt 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CON T EN T S Foreword by Prudence M. Rice ix Preface xv Acknowledgments xix 1. Introduction: How Dylan Got Me Started 1 2. What’s in Store? A User’s Guide to 2012 Maya Prophecies 9 3. What We Know about the Maya and Their Ideas about Creation 35 4. The Calendar: Jewel of the Maya Crown 65 5. The Astronomy behind the Current Maya Creation 85 6. What Goes Around: Other Ends of Time 117 7. Only in America 135 8. Epilogue: Anticipation 163 Notes 167 Glossay 179 Index 183 vii F OREWORD Several decades ago when I was a graduate student, I asked a profes- sor about the possibility that a Maya building was astronomically oriented. His response was to scoff that there were so many stars in the sky that it was inevitable that a building would be oriented to at least one of them. (Apparently, he was of the mind that there are no stupid questions, only stupid people asking questions.) But that was then and this is now, and thankfully such queries are no longer treated so dismissively. For this, we owe a tremendous debt to the careful cross-cultural observations and painstaking astronomical measurements of Anthony F. Aveni, who has pioneered the devel- opment of archaeoastronomy (or cultural astronomy) into a highly respected science worldwide. In The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012, Aveni treats us to a thoughtful analysis of the burgeoning pseudo-theories attached to the closing date of the Maya calendar in December of that year. As his career and many awards attest, Aveni is a lifelong teacher, and ix FOREWORD in The End of Time he teaches all of us—astronomers, Mayanists, and the general public—about the complexities of how the Maya arrived at this date and what it might mean for the modern world. He debunks the outlandish claims of future catastrophes by systematically eval- uating scientific data: he walks the walk and “does the math.” But beyond that, he is interested in what this current fascination with the 2012 ending date says about us: why are we—especially twenty-first- century Americans—so preoccupied with divining its meaning? Aveni reviews philosophical and intellectual trends in Western thought, going back to Classical and Biblical traditions, espe- cially Gnosticism, and apocalyptic histories, but he also involves long-standing Euro-American romanticized images of indigenous inhabitants of the Americas and the native wisdom they embodied. Americans today have a puzzling anti-science streak that is mani- fest in many ways, including rejection of evolutionary theory and an uncritical acceptance of bizarre notions about lost continents, ancient astronauts, Y2K disasters, planetary conjunctions, and all kinds of similar hokum, much of which is purveyed by the Internet and Hollywood. (This bipolar tendency was certainly evident in the lead-up to the 2008 national elections: at the same time that voters railed against “the liberal professoriate” in our nation’s uni- versities, they were simultaneously demanding greater access to [read “cheaper”] college educations for their children. Who do they think are teaching these children?) Aveni is generous in his assessment of why the Y12 phenome- non has gotten traction with today’s populace: it is less about global cataclysm and more about a rejection of Western cultural imperial- ism and a desire, in effect, to get in touch with our kinder, gen- tler selves. He is not one of the “haughty, exclusive establishment” scientists that bash the views of the non-cognoscenti. Instead, he arrives at an understanding that Y12 aficionados share with the fringe theorists a deep concern about the origins of humans and civilizations and their ultimate fate. In much of the content of the pseudoscientific theories that have come and gone in public consciousness is a sense that the x FOREWORD answers to these puzzles lie in “secret knowledge” of ancient civili- zations or are encoded in certain rhythmic repetitions in the natural world, such as sunspot cycles or acupuncture points. The Maya had their secret knowledge, to be sure, but this knowledge was about the gods who carried the burdens of cosmic time. Like many prescientific peoples, the Maya believed that time moved in cycles. Lots of cycles. Cycles of 20 days, cycles of 65 days, of 260 days, 365 days, 20 years, 52 years, 260 years, 400 years, and on and on. Generally, cyclical time is ritual time and mythical time. But in publicly celebrating the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new one, the terrifying possibility always lurks that the new cycle will not actually restart. In the face of this uncertainty, cyclical time has the advantage of being “controllable”: a Maya king and his calendar priests can command labor and tribute and sacrifice on the part of the masses to appease the gods and ensure that that the cycle will renew . and when it does, they can triumphantly proclaim their control over the gods of time as the sun rises once again to start a new day and new cycle. Such esoteric knowledge about the timing of cycles’ endings and rains’ startings and eclipses’ occur- rences was kept secret from the people in order to maintain the mystical power of the sacred king, or k’ul ajaw. Like his royal ances- tors, the divine king, who appeared before his subjects as the Sun God and the Maize God on ceremonial occasions, undergirded his absolute authority by seeming to “control” the cosmos, the rains, the maize crop . and of course the people, who were held in thrall to this world view. Along with these multiple, ongoing cycles of time, the Maya believed—as did the peoples of many ancient civilizations—that there were multiple creations of the world, animals, and humans. According to the highland K’iche’ Maya creation myth Popol Vuh, we are nearing the end of the fourth of these creations. The first three began with the gods’ unsuccessful attempts to create humans who would “pray to them and keep the days.” That is, the gods wanted humans to be able to speak intelligibly and observe proper rituals on the proper days of the calendar. Humans were unable to xi FOREWORD do this until they were created of maize, thereby ensuring that this fourth creation of the universe was a success. According to the Maya, this creation and calendar cycle, a “great cycle” of 5,126 years, began on August 13, 3114 BC and will end on December 21, AD 2012. The Maya dated important events in the lives of their dynasties and cities by means of what archae- ologists call the Long Count. The Long Count is truly looooong: it allows the Maya to situate any important event by counting the number of elapsed days in multiple intersecting cycles since this starting date of the present creation. Imagine if we had to date all our letters or e-mails or blog entries by counting how many days had elapsed since January 1, AD 1! (In fact, Julian calendars used by astronomers do this very thing, but today most of us use the more convenient Gregorian calendar with its units—cycles!—of weeks and months.) But it is difficult, as Aveni and others (including me) have noted, to understand why August of 3114 BC and December of AD 2012 are the termini of the Long Count.
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