© Reuters/Victor RuizThe Kukulkan pyramid stands at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula July 7, 2007. Chichen Itza is one of the contenders of the new seven Wonders of the World.
A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and over-hyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, much as our year ends on Dec. 31.)
The Mayan calendar was converted to today's Gregorian calendar using a calculation called the GMT constant, named for the last initials of three early Mayanist researchers. Much of the work emphasized dates recovered from colonial documents that were written in the Mayan language in the Latin alphabet, according to the chapter's author, Gerardo Aldana, University of California, Santa Barbara professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies.
Later, the GMT constant was bolstered by American linguist and anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury, who used data in the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a Mayan calendar and almanac that charts dates relative to the movements of Venus.
"He took the position that his work removed the last obstacle to fully accepting the GMT constant," Aldana said in a statement. "Others took his work even further, suggesting that he had proven the GMT constant to be correct."
But according to Aldana, Lounsbury's evidence is far from irrefutable.
"If the Venus Table cannot be used to prove the FMT as Lounsbury suggests, its acceptance depends on the reliability of the corroborating data," he said. That historical data, he said, is less reliable than the Table itself, causing the argument for the GMT constant to fall "like a stack of cards."
Aldana doesn't have any answers as to what the correct calendar conversion might be, preferring to focus on why the current interpretation may be wrong. Looks like end-of-the-world theorists may need to find another ancient calendar on which to pin their apocalyptic hopes.
Well Ms. Pappas, the coming few years may hold much more to fear than just Mayan calendar date issues. If you have been keeping up on anything beside the Mayan calendar, you would also know that many other factors could target 2012 as a critical year. So much is being revealed about the sun's violent behavior, even by NASA, which may severely affect our technology and way of life in 2012-2013. Pole shifts are increasing by greater rates annually, which will affect traditional global weather patterns, at the very minimum. Remember Yellowstone?. We are 30,000 years beyond the expected mega eruption, which in itself could devastate more than half of the U.S. continent for many years. Ash clouds and darkness sort of ruins food supply. None of this handful of events is tied to the Mayan calendar. Finally, whether you accept some widening evidence of a Planet X, or Niburu, and I'm not saying you should or shouldn't, that proposed passage is to occur within the next 2 years, and in itself could cause violent pole shift and weather issues. All I am saying is that it would be easy to lulled into some relief that ONE source disputes the Mayan calendar date of December 2010, but at the risk of you thinking that many of us are willing or wishing disaster on our world, let us not back off from keeping our senses sharp for many other factors pointing to 2012 as at least a year that triggers massive changes in our world. Knowledge is power, and power may mean survival.