A lot of us suspected it, and now we have proof.
A rare and remarkable finding at an the archaeological site of Xultun in the northeast corner of the country clearly indicates that the Mayan calendar goes on for another 7000 years.
The finding was made when a student at the site sat down to eat lunch and noticed some paint on a stone in a looter’s trench. Investigation led to a older than the other structures build on top of it. The room contained a mural of a king, a second mural of “strangely dressed figures” and a wall covered in astronomical calculations that indicate a calendar extending thousands of years into the future.
The room has been called a “Mayan workshop for astronomers”.
Some have said the room indicates that the Mayan calendar continues for another 7000 years. Some say for only 4000.
Either way, one thing is for certain. That sandwich-eating student is totally going to get an ‘A’.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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Well there goes what I thought was a genius theme for my Mayan Apocalypse party.
Yes, but you can always fall back on the ever-popular zombie apocalypse. Or even scarier, the Rush Limbaugh evangelical moral crusader apocalypse.
How interesting that we would discover this in 2012, of all years!
Yes. Suspicious it is.
Actually, Bill Saturno’s student discovered the room, exposed-by-a-looter’s-tunnel, in early 2011. Suspicious it is not.
And the tables written on the wall therein (although *very* interesting to historians of science), give NO new information about how far into the future the Maya predicted. We’ve known for decades that at Palenque, scribes predicted an anniversary celebration in the year 4772 AD. The same astronomical tables appear in the Dresden Codex, written about 500 years later. The more head-scratching of the Xultun numbers, the multiples-of-magic-numbers tables, are simply lengths of time, without any anchor to beginnings or ends. They do NOT specifically reach 7000 years into the future. It’s like they discovered a set of numbers saying: “April 15th: 5,128 years and 32 days.” Doesn’t say from (or to) WHICH April 15th they are talking about. There’s no verb at all. Does THAT tell you “The calendar goes on beyond 2012?”
Thanks for the excellent information Mark. As I’m sure you’re aware, this was reported widely in the media as new and important information. I’m not sure wo the sources for that information may have been. Do you have any idea why anyone would have portrayed this discovery to the media in that light?
Good post!