2012 And All That – Part Three
The basic unit of the “Long Count” calendar of the Maya was the Tun, which consisted of a cycle of 360 days. Following on from this were increasing multiples of Tuns such as the K’atun (7,200 days), then the B’aktun (144,000 days), the Piktun, the Kalabtun and so on. However, modern scientists calculate time by the solar year, which is the time it takes for the earth to move around the Sun. Our solar year is approximately 365 and a quarter days.
So the question posed in the previous instalment was why, if the Maya were such renowned astronomers in the ancient world, did they choose 360 days as the basic unit of the Long Count calendar, instead of the 365 and a quarter days that we use today. Surely it would have been natural for them to use the solar year as their basic unit of time. The answer to this riddle is very simple. They did!
According to the Long Count calendar, the fifth world age in which we are now living began on August 11, 3114 BC. The astonishing truth that has escaped Mayan scholars up until now, is that in 3114 BC the solar year actually was 360 days! The earth had a different orbit around the sun. The corollary must be equally apparent and that is, sometime between 3114 BC and the present, the earth has changed its orbit around the sun!
Now this is an assertion that might seem ludicrous in the extreme, and one that the astronomers of today would simply reject outright. But what these scientists do not realize is that the recorded works of societies that lived on earth at that time still exist, and they tell a very different story from what we believe today. It is also the reason why the Long Count calendar has lost its predictive value and is no longer used by the Maya today.
The confusion between the modern length of the solar year and that recorded by ancient cultures has been neatly summarised by the Russian-born American scholar Immanuel Velikovsky. “All over the world we find that there was at some time the same calendar of 360 days, and at some later date, about the seventh century before the present era, five days were added at the end of the year, as ‘days over the year’ or ‘days of nothing’.”
“Scholars who investigated the calendars of the Incas of Peru and the Mayas of Yucatan wondered at the calendar of 360 days; so did the scholars who studied the calendars of the Egyptian, Persians, Hindus, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Hebrews, Chinese, Greeks, or Romans. Most of them, while debating the problem in their own field did not suspect that the same problem turned up in the calendar of every nation of antiquity.” (Worlds In Collision)
As Velikovsky has pointed out, it was not only the ancient Maya who referred to a solar year of 360 days divided into months of 30 days, so too did the Incas of Peru. The ancient Peruvian year was divided into twelve Quilla (or moons), each comprising 30 days. At a later time five extra days were added to their calendar, and were referred to as Allcacanquis.
As author W. Hales noted in his book New Analysis of Chronology published in 1809, the calendar of the ancient Chinese also consisted of 360 days divided into twelve months of 30 days. They too later added five days to their solar year, referring to these extra days as Khe-ying. Similar results have been found by researchers into the Hindu Vedas.
The German scholar Thibaut, writing in 1899 noted: “All Veda texts speak uniformly and exclusively of a year of 360 days. Passages in which this length of the year is directly stated are found in all of the Brahamanas. It is striking that the Vedas nowhere mention an intercalary period, and while repeatedly stating that the year consists of 360 days, nowhere refer to the five or six days that actually are part of the solar year.”
In the Bundahis, the sacred book of the Persians, it was recorded that the year was composed of 360 days divided into twelve months of thirty days each. In the seventh century before Christ, five Gatha days were added to their calendar. These Gatha days were supplementary days added to the original 360 days in order to conform to the length of the new solar year.
Long before their cuneiform script was deciphered, it was known that the Babylonian year had only 360 days. Writing in 1888, the scholar J. Gilmore recorded that the Greek historian Ctesias of Cnidus, who lived in the 5th century BC, wrote: “The walls of Babylon were 360 furlongs in compass, as many as there had been days in the year.” Likewise, the Assyrian year consisted of 360 days, with a decade (called a Saurus) amounting to 3,600 days.
The story is the same in ancient Egypt. The Ebers Papyrus states that during the 18th Dynasty the calendar had a year of 360 days divided up into 12 months of 30 days. The Book of Sothis attributed to the Egyptian priest Manetho, indicated that this 360-day year was later changed, and that in the eighth or seventh century BC five additional days were added, that were referred to as the epagomena, or “inauspicious” days.
Cleobulus, who was considered to be one of the seven sages of ancient Greece, noted in a famous allegory regarding their calendar: “The father is one, the sons are twelve, and each one of them has thirty daughters.” The ancient Romans also counted 360 days to a year. The Greek historian Plutarch, who later became a Roman citizen, wrote in his Life of Numa, that in the time of Romulus in the eighth century, the Romans had a year of 360 days only.
The Bible also confirms that from the fifteenth to the eighth century BC, each month had thirty days and there were twelve months to the year. As proof of this Hebrew scholars quote from the story of the great flood of Noah as found in the Book of Genesis.
The great flood is quoted as beginning on the 17th day of the 2nd month (Genesis 7:11) and ended exactly five months later on the 17th day of the 7th month (Genesis 8:3-4), a period which is given as 150 days. Five months amounting to 150 days is equivalent to a year of 360 days.
So the question posed at the beginning of this instalment needs to be changed. We do not need to ask why the ancient Maya had a year (Tun) amounting to 360 days. We need to ask what exactly it was that occurred to cause them to change the length of their year from 360 days to the present solar year of 365 and a quarter days.
To answer this question, we need to investigate the riddle of the 52 year cycle that was known as the “Calendar Round”.
