2012 And All That – Part Four
The basic unit of the Mayan Long Count calendar was the Tun. The Tun consisted of a cycle of 360 days. As we have seen from the previous instalment, at the time that the Maya set up their Long Count calendar, this actually was the exact number of days it took for the earth to travel around the Sun.
However, the Maya were not the only culture to use a calendar based on a solar year of 360 days. Ancient texts and sacred scripts show that the same length of year was also used at that time by the Egyptians, Persians, Hindus, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Hebrews, Chinese, Greeks and Romans.
If these ancient texts are to be believed, and there was a time in earth’s history when the length of the solar year was exactly 360 days, then the obvious question that arises is when did it change to its present length of 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes, and what was the cause of this change. The answer, according to these same ancient texts, is that some three and a half thousand years ago the earth had a close encounter with an enormous comet.
The effects of this cometary encounter devastated the entire planet, generating mountainous tides that swept away entire cities, exploding volcanoes that incinerated forests, earthquakes that fractured the land, hurricane-force winds and tornados that annihilated man and beast alike, and a darkness that enveloped the world for five days.
The devastation caused by this event was recorded by those few Maya who survived, as we can see from the following excerpts from their sacred books.
“It was ruin and destruction …. the sea was piled up …. it was a great inundation …. people were drowned in a sticky substance raining from the sky …. the face of the earth grew dark and the gloomy rain endured days and nights …. and then there was a great din of fire above their heads.” (Popul-Vuh)
“There descended from the sky a rain of bitumen and of a sticky substance …. the earth was obscured and it rained day and night. And men ran hither and thither and were as if seized by madness; they tried to climb to the roofs, and the houses crashed down; they tried to climb the trees, and the trees cast them far away; and when they tried to escape in caves and caverns, these were suddenly closed.” (Manuscript Quiche)
Similar accounts of destruction raining from the skies were preserved in the Manuscript Troano of the Maya, as well as the ancient Mexican text of the Annals of Cuautitlan. They describe in vivid detail how the land was swamped by mega-tsunamis, and a terrible wind swept the earth. They called the agent of this destruction “Hurakan”, from which our modern word “hurricane” is derived. The Aztecs called the age that ended in a rain of fire from the sky Quiauh-tonatiuh, meaning “the sun of the fire-rain.”
But the Mayan tales of devastation that had swamped their lands and created havoc among their people did not end there. They went on to describe how this terrifying demon of death had returned again after an absence of 52 years, to once again lay waste to their lands and wipe out their cities. Just 52 years after their last “age” had ended in a world-wide cataclysm, another world age now lay in ruins as a result of the second close encounter with this gigantic comet.
And so was born the unique Mayan “52 year calendar cycle” that was to last right up until the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. The “Long Count” method of measuring time ceased to be an important feature of Maya daily life from that point onward. Instead, Mayan astronomers created a new cycle which would repeat itself after exactly 52 years. This 52 year cycle has come to be known as the “Calendar Round”.
Those astronomers and priests of the Maya who had survived the destruction of the previous 52 year cycle, waited in fearful expectation for the fiery comet to return and once again destroy their world. But fortunately for the Maya and for the rest of the world, the comet that had passed disastrously close to the earth on two previous occasions, 52 years apart, no longer returned to threaten the earth.
However, the traumatic memories of those terrible days in their recent past made an indelible impression on those Maya priests who had survived their earlier encounters. As the 52nd anniversary of their last encounter with the comet drew near, so the entire nation became gripped with the fear of imminent death. Religious ceremonies were held, imploring their Gods to rescue them in their hour of peril.
One can imagine the wave of jubilation that engulfed the entire Maya nation when it became apparent that there would be no third appearance of the comet, and that they had been spared to enjoy a new period of peace in the heavens. Yet, as the next 52 year cycle drew to an end, a new sense of impending doom arose. For there was no guarantee that the fiery Gods of the skies might not return once again to destroy them all.
We do not know at what point some city ruler or priest came up with the idea of offering human sacrifices to ward off the return of the comet. But whenever that time was, once it had been found to be successful, it was incorporated as a vital and necessary ingredient of every 52 year cycle from that point onward.
And what the Maya began, the Aztecs perfected, so that when the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez arrived on the shores of Mexico in 1519, he found thousands of unfortunate souls sacrificed in a single ceremony by having their beating hearts torn out of their living bodies.
The outcome of these disasters was that the length of the year had changed. The earth had moved into a new orbit around the Sun taking five more days to complete its annual journey. And so, like all the other cultures mentioned in the previous instalment, the Maya amended their calendar by adding five extra days. Their new solar year was called the “Haab”, and the five extra days were referred to as Wayeb or “nameless days”.
