MEXICO CITY (AP) - Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.
Or is it?
Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."
It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.
At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.
"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."
Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.
A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.
But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes "predictions" from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?"
It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades - the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or "Planet X." But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.
One of them is Monument Six.
Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn't survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.
It's unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.
However - shades of Indiana Jones - erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.
Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico's National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, "He will descend from the sky."
Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 - including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.
And anyway, Mayas in the drought-stricken Yucatan peninsula have bigger worries than 2012.
"If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn't have any idea," said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. "That the world is going to end? They wouldn't believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain."
The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy
Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.
"It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. "The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six."
Bernal suggests that apocalypse is "a very Western, Christian" concept projected onto the Maya, perhaps because Western myths are "exhausted."
If it were all mythology, perhaps it could be written off.
But some say the Maya knew another secret: the Earth's axis wobbles, slightly changing the alignment of the stars every year. Once every 25,800 years, the sun lines up with the center of our Milky Way galaxy on a winter solstice, the sun's lowest point in the horizon.
That will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, when the sun appears to rise in the same spot where the bright center of galaxy sets.
Another spooky coincidence?
"The question I would ask these guys is, so what?" says Phil Plait, an astronomer who runs the "Bad Astronomy" blog. He says the alignment doesn't fall precisely in 2012, and distant stars exert no force that could harm Earth.
"They're really super-duper trying to find anything astronomical they can to fit that date of 2012," Plait said.
But author John Major Jenkins says his two-decade study of Mayan ruins indicate the Maya were aware of the alignment and attached great importance to it.
"If we want to honor and respect how the Maya think about this, then we would say that the Maya viewed 2012, as all cycle endings, as a time of transformation and renewal," said Jenkins.
As the Internet gained popularity in the 1990s, so did word of the "fateful" date, and some began worrying about 2012 disasters the Mayas never dreamed of.
Author Lawrence Joseph says a peak in explosive storms on the surface of the sun could knock out North America's power grid for years, triggering food shortages, water scarcity - a collapse of civilization. Solar peaks occur about every 11 years, but Joseph says there's evidence the 2012 peak could be "a lulu."
While pressing governments to install protection for power grids, Joseph counsels readers not to "use 2012 as an excuse to not live in a healthy, responsible fashion. I mean, don't let the credit cards go up."
Another History Channel program titled "Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012: End of Days" says a galactic alignment or magnetic disturbances could somehow trigger a "pole shift."
"The entire mantle of the earth would shift in a matter of days, perhaps hours, changing the position of the north and south poles, causing worldwide disaster," a narrator proclaims. "Earthquakes would rock every continent, massive tsunamis would inundate coastal cities. It would be the ultimate planetary catastrophe."
The idea apparently originates with a 19th century Frenchman, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, a priest-turned-archaeologist who got it from his study of ancient Mayan and Aztec texts.
Scientists say that, at best, the poles might change location by one degree over a million years, with no sign that it would start in 2012.
While long discredited, Brasseur de Bourbourg proves one thing: Westerners have been trying for more than a century to pin doomsday scenarios on the Maya. And while fascinated by ancient lore, advocates seldom examine more recent experiences with apocalypse predictions.
"No one who's writing in now seems to remember that the last time we thought the world was going to end, it didn't," says Martin, the astronomy webmaster. "There doesn't seem to be a lot of memory that things were fine the last time around."
2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayans insist
Moderator: Super Moderators
2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayans insist
Still an Original Pirate since Aug 2000
Wanna ride the Zamboni?
Wanna ride the Zamboni?
Astronomy in Ancient Civilisations
Fascinating article, Megman. Here is anther article on ancient astronomy. Mysterious and reassuring?
...from realmagick dot com http://www.realmagick.com/articles/54/2154.html
by Michael Lewis
It is a pity that the myths of ancient civilisations are so easily dismissed as the musings of savage minds, as it is subsequently easy to overlook the fact that many of their myths were encryptions of their astronomical knowledge. The best example of this is the Incas. Although primitive in their thinking and technology, the Incas had much that modern civilisation could envy. Not only the huge mineral wealth which was looted by the invading Spanish, but also a culture that allowed tribes of different races to live together in perfect harmony, joined by a mutual religion that told each tribe its place within the Incas, a religion instructed by their studies of the stars above them. The Incas believed that each tribe originated from a different constellation, and just as the stars upon which their religion was based moved in harmony in the sky, so they to chose to live in harmony with each other.
The Incas interest in the stars went far beyond social affairs. When the Spanish attacked and destroyed the Incas, claiming their wealth and converting them to Roman Catholicism, they recorded many of the Incas myths. This has preserved the myths of this civilisation so that we may study them today, in a much purer form than the myths of any other ancient civilisation. The work of Dr. William Sullivan in his book 'The Secrets of the Incas: Myth, astronomy and the war against time' has revealed that these myths, previously considered to be mere stories, in fact reveal an awareness of astronomy.
In 'Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time', Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend propose a theory that the ancient civilisations throughout the world were aware of precession of the equinoxes, an astrological phenomenon. As the Earth orbits the Sun its axis of rotation (the imaginary line from the North Pole to the South Pole) is at 23.5 degrees to the equatorial plane of the Sun. In other words the Earth leans slightly to one side. The gravitational pull of the other planets in the solar system effects mainly upon the centre of the Earth, effectively pulling it 'upright'. These dynamics cause the Earth's axis to wobble as it spins. The wobble of the Earth's axis of rotation, is called precession.
To the human observer, without the use of technology, this precession can only be observed as a change in the orientation of the stars, or more accurately, of the Earth's orientation within the fixed sphere of stars. The Earth's tilt remains almost constant in relation to the ecliptic plane (the path of the Earth's orbit) and so precession has no observable effect on the position on the horizon where the Sun rises at any given time of year, such as solstice or equinox. It is only by observing the background of stars rising at dawn on a given solar date, such as a solstice or equinox, that an ancient astronomer could have observed precession. In this way, the observer would have noted that a given star or constellation would rise 'late' after a period of time. It takes the Earth approximately 26,000 years to complete a single precessional wobble on its axis, and so it takes a long time to notice the change in the day on which a given star or constellation will rise, the rate of recession observed in this manner is approximately one day every 72 years.
The ancient civilisations did not fully understand precession, having no real knowledge of the structure of the solar system. They did not know that precession was a continuing cycle, repeating every 26,000 years. To them, it was a linear phenomenon, and it appeared to them that the stars were following, or perhaps writing, time. This led to their beliefs that the future could be determined by studying the stars, and predicting their movements, and in particular, by studying precession. However, studying precession, even as a linear event, still required a 72 year observation, and so the task could not be performed by a single individual. The task had to be passed on to the next generation, and so the information gathered so far had to be passed on, and it was for this purpose that the myths were written. By referring to a particular solar date such as a solstice or equinox and naming a star just rising at dawn (when it would be visible) each myth could encrypt a years data. On a year when precession was noticed (every 72 years) the myth for that year would encrypt this observation. Over time, the patterns could be seen, and the ancient astronomers would gain a further understanding of precession.
The ancients also used the planets, and so Saturn, having the longest orbit, lasting 30 years, became the Old God, the Father of Time. We still remember this as Old Father Time or the Grim Reaper - the staff or scythe respectively represents the precessing axis of the Earth. Saturn was said to be the owner of a mill - Hamlet's Mill, and this image of the Earth as a grindstone, rocked back and forth by Saturn, encrypted a diagram of precessional time as mental imagery, and also how Saturn was the marker of precessional time.
Dr William Sullivan took these theories further by applying them to the Incas. He decoded the Andean myths using three fundamental rules:
Planets are referred to in myths as gods
Stars are referred to in myths as animals (the word 'zodiac' means 'dial of animals')
Topographical descriptions (positions of places in relation to each other) in myths describe the position of the sun against the fixed sphere of stars
This revealed how Andean society had been completely governed by the stars since 500 BC. Every part of their lives was part of their religion, and their religion was written in the stars. The Milky Way, which they called 'Mayu' meaning 'river', was seen as a passageway between the material world of the living, and the ethereal world of the gods and the dead, and the Andean myths decoded by Dr William Sullivan centered on this belief and on the Milky Way, revealing the Incas history encrypted in their myths.
For example, in their creation myth, the Creator god Wiraqocha - a tall, bearded stranger carrying a staff - appears at Lake Titicaca and creates the Sun, Moon and stars and the agricultural tribes of Andes. Wiraqocha means 'tilted plane of the celestial sphere', which is a reference to the obliqueness of the ecliptic to the celestial equator. Wiraqocha is Saturn, hence the bearded man carrying a staff - Father Time. The myth explains how, beginning around 200 BC, the Sun rises at the solstices so that it is seen from Earth to be touching the Milky Way, opening the 'gate' to the land of the dead and the god Wiraqocha comes to Earth, beginning a new religion of ancestor worship. There is archeological evidence of a rapid spread of a sedentary agricultural civilisation throughout the Andean region at this time.
The key points of the Incas history are recorded in their myths right up to the destruction of the Andean Empire. The Incas used the same system of astronomy in around 1432 to predict the inevitable destruction of the entire Andean civilisation and its religion within five generations, as the Sun would no longer appear to touch the Milky Way when it rose at the solstices. Despite attempts to avert this disaster, the stars cannot be changed, and sure enough, in 1532, at the December solstice the sun was seen to rise alongside, but not touching, the Milky Way, closing the 'gate' to the land of the dead and signifying the end of Andean civilisation. The Andean Empire, the largest land empire in the world, was successfully invaded by 175 Spaniards.
The Incas had a complex religion of astronomy through which they predicted and wrote their history. The Andean Empire began when the Sun first rose over the Milky Way in 200 BC, and ended when the Sun failed to do so in 1532 AD, and throughout this 1732 year period the empire was governed by the Milky Way, and the stars around it.
The Incas were not the only civilisation to hold such beliefs and practices. According to Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in 'Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time', thinkers in the ancient civilisations of Sumer, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica, India and even Ireland shared the awareness of precession, and had comparable myths and religious ideas. Dr William Sullivan explains how the Inca pantheon matches the ancient pantheons of Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, the Hopi and the Polynesians. For the Incas, Saturn was the old, bearded god who carried a staff, Venus was a beautiful woman with disheveled hair, Jupiter was the king, Mars was the god of war, and Mercury the messenger. The vital question here is why these same ideas appear in so many different ancient civilisations all around the world. Across five continents, from all around the world we have myths mentioning an underworld or land of the dead, with an entrance along the annual path of the Sun where it crosses one branch of the Milky Way. This entrance or gate (Helgrind in Norse mythology) lies between the constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius, and marks the centre of our galaxy. The Roman writer Virgil said that this land was guarded by scorpion men (Scorpius), and the medieval Italian poet Dante said that this land was guarded by horse men, called centaurs (Sagittarius).
The Incas celebrated their rites of the dead at the December solstice, when their constellation of the Llama (in the western Scorpius) was rising. At this time, they believed, the entrance to the land of the dead was open and so they feasted in the presence of their sacred ancestors. To the Polynesians, the Milky Way was road along which souls traveled to the spirit world, and the Sump Indians of Nicaragua see 'mother scorpion' in the Milky Way as the destination of the deceased's soul. When we celebrate Halloween (All Hallows Eve) and (two days later) All Souls Day in the Christian tradition, we forget that when the first European pagans were celebrating at this time, it was at this time that the entrance to the land of the dead was rising. In Central and South America, the native Indians spend All Hallows Eve visiting the graves of their loved ones and feasting.
So how did people across five continents, in civilisations that had not even developed a written language, come to share the same ideas? How were these ideas shared between cultures that did not even know of each other's existence? There is a vital clue in the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Two Peruvian archeologists, brothers Fernando and Edgar Elorrieta, have discovered that in this valley, the valley of the Urubamba river, each of the constellations significant to the Incas is represented by a huge effigy of the appropriate animal - each effigy is made up of a whole mountainside. Some are natural, others have been created by the selective placement of agricultural terraces, but all of them have been there for around two thousand years. The two condor effigies (the Incas believed that the souls of the dead were carried to the land of the dead by a condor) both have pre-Columbian graves beneath them. Carved into a cliff overlooking this valley is the 45 metre (159 feet) tall face of a bearded man wearing the cap of a priest-astronomer, the face of Wiraqocha.
So who is this tall, bearded man who came to the Andes in 200 BC, carrying a staff and wearing a cap, and taught the Incas agriculture and astronomy? He was not Andean, as the Andean people do not have facial hair, so where did he come from? In fact, it appears to be the same man that taught agriculture and astronomy to each of the other four continents, each remembering this man as Father Time and identifying him with Saturn. Now we can assume that it could not possibly be the same person, but we cannot deny that these teachers must have come from the same race themselves, and have had at least some level of recent contact, seeing as they all maintained similar, if not identical, attire. Perhaps they were a race of explorers. This would certainly explain their interest in astronomy, as this would be the science necessary to them in order for them to navigate the lands and seas and cover the distances that would have taken them to every corner of the world.
###
So, the plot thickens...
...from realmagick dot com http://www.realmagick.com/articles/54/2154.html
by Michael Lewis
It is a pity that the myths of ancient civilisations are so easily dismissed as the musings of savage minds, as it is subsequently easy to overlook the fact that many of their myths were encryptions of their astronomical knowledge. The best example of this is the Incas. Although primitive in their thinking and technology, the Incas had much that modern civilisation could envy. Not only the huge mineral wealth which was looted by the invading Spanish, but also a culture that allowed tribes of different races to live together in perfect harmony, joined by a mutual religion that told each tribe its place within the Incas, a religion instructed by their studies of the stars above them. The Incas believed that each tribe originated from a different constellation, and just as the stars upon which their religion was based moved in harmony in the sky, so they to chose to live in harmony with each other.
The Incas interest in the stars went far beyond social affairs. When the Spanish attacked and destroyed the Incas, claiming their wealth and converting them to Roman Catholicism, they recorded many of the Incas myths. This has preserved the myths of this civilisation so that we may study them today, in a much purer form than the myths of any other ancient civilisation. The work of Dr. William Sullivan in his book 'The Secrets of the Incas: Myth, astronomy and the war against time' has revealed that these myths, previously considered to be mere stories, in fact reveal an awareness of astronomy.
In 'Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time', Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend propose a theory that the ancient civilisations throughout the world were aware of precession of the equinoxes, an astrological phenomenon. As the Earth orbits the Sun its axis of rotation (the imaginary line from the North Pole to the South Pole) is at 23.5 degrees to the equatorial plane of the Sun. In other words the Earth leans slightly to one side. The gravitational pull of the other planets in the solar system effects mainly upon the centre of the Earth, effectively pulling it 'upright'. These dynamics cause the Earth's axis to wobble as it spins. The wobble of the Earth's axis of rotation, is called precession.
To the human observer, without the use of technology, this precession can only be observed as a change in the orientation of the stars, or more accurately, of the Earth's orientation within the fixed sphere of stars. The Earth's tilt remains almost constant in relation to the ecliptic plane (the path of the Earth's orbit) and so precession has no observable effect on the position on the horizon where the Sun rises at any given time of year, such as solstice or equinox. It is only by observing the background of stars rising at dawn on a given solar date, such as a solstice or equinox, that an ancient astronomer could have observed precession. In this way, the observer would have noted that a given star or constellation would rise 'late' after a period of time. It takes the Earth approximately 26,000 years to complete a single precessional wobble on its axis, and so it takes a long time to notice the change in the day on which a given star or constellation will rise, the rate of recession observed in this manner is approximately one day every 72 years.
The ancient civilisations did not fully understand precession, having no real knowledge of the structure of the solar system. They did not know that precession was a continuing cycle, repeating every 26,000 years. To them, it was a linear phenomenon, and it appeared to them that the stars were following, or perhaps writing, time. This led to their beliefs that the future could be determined by studying the stars, and predicting their movements, and in particular, by studying precession. However, studying precession, even as a linear event, still required a 72 year observation, and so the task could not be performed by a single individual. The task had to be passed on to the next generation, and so the information gathered so far had to be passed on, and it was for this purpose that the myths were written. By referring to a particular solar date such as a solstice or equinox and naming a star just rising at dawn (when it would be visible) each myth could encrypt a years data. On a year when precession was noticed (every 72 years) the myth for that year would encrypt this observation. Over time, the patterns could be seen, and the ancient astronomers would gain a further understanding of precession.
The ancients also used the planets, and so Saturn, having the longest orbit, lasting 30 years, became the Old God, the Father of Time. We still remember this as Old Father Time or the Grim Reaper - the staff or scythe respectively represents the precessing axis of the Earth. Saturn was said to be the owner of a mill - Hamlet's Mill, and this image of the Earth as a grindstone, rocked back and forth by Saturn, encrypted a diagram of precessional time as mental imagery, and also how Saturn was the marker of precessional time.
Dr William Sullivan took these theories further by applying them to the Incas. He decoded the Andean myths using three fundamental rules:
Planets are referred to in myths as gods
Stars are referred to in myths as animals (the word 'zodiac' means 'dial of animals')
Topographical descriptions (positions of places in relation to each other) in myths describe the position of the sun against the fixed sphere of stars
This revealed how Andean society had been completely governed by the stars since 500 BC. Every part of their lives was part of their religion, and their religion was written in the stars. The Milky Way, which they called 'Mayu' meaning 'river', was seen as a passageway between the material world of the living, and the ethereal world of the gods and the dead, and the Andean myths decoded by Dr William Sullivan centered on this belief and on the Milky Way, revealing the Incas history encrypted in their myths.
For example, in their creation myth, the Creator god Wiraqocha - a tall, bearded stranger carrying a staff - appears at Lake Titicaca and creates the Sun, Moon and stars and the agricultural tribes of Andes. Wiraqocha means 'tilted plane of the celestial sphere', which is a reference to the obliqueness of the ecliptic to the celestial equator. Wiraqocha is Saturn, hence the bearded man carrying a staff - Father Time. The myth explains how, beginning around 200 BC, the Sun rises at the solstices so that it is seen from Earth to be touching the Milky Way, opening the 'gate' to the land of the dead and the god Wiraqocha comes to Earth, beginning a new religion of ancestor worship. There is archeological evidence of a rapid spread of a sedentary agricultural civilisation throughout the Andean region at this time.
The key points of the Incas history are recorded in their myths right up to the destruction of the Andean Empire. The Incas used the same system of astronomy in around 1432 to predict the inevitable destruction of the entire Andean civilisation and its religion within five generations, as the Sun would no longer appear to touch the Milky Way when it rose at the solstices. Despite attempts to avert this disaster, the stars cannot be changed, and sure enough, in 1532, at the December solstice the sun was seen to rise alongside, but not touching, the Milky Way, closing the 'gate' to the land of the dead and signifying the end of Andean civilisation. The Andean Empire, the largest land empire in the world, was successfully invaded by 175 Spaniards.
The Incas had a complex religion of astronomy through which they predicted and wrote their history. The Andean Empire began when the Sun first rose over the Milky Way in 200 BC, and ended when the Sun failed to do so in 1532 AD, and throughout this 1732 year period the empire was governed by the Milky Way, and the stars around it.
The Incas were not the only civilisation to hold such beliefs and practices. According to Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in 'Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time', thinkers in the ancient civilisations of Sumer, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica, India and even Ireland shared the awareness of precession, and had comparable myths and religious ideas. Dr William Sullivan explains how the Inca pantheon matches the ancient pantheons of Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, the Hopi and the Polynesians. For the Incas, Saturn was the old, bearded god who carried a staff, Venus was a beautiful woman with disheveled hair, Jupiter was the king, Mars was the god of war, and Mercury the messenger. The vital question here is why these same ideas appear in so many different ancient civilisations all around the world. Across five continents, from all around the world we have myths mentioning an underworld or land of the dead, with an entrance along the annual path of the Sun where it crosses one branch of the Milky Way. This entrance or gate (Helgrind in Norse mythology) lies between the constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius, and marks the centre of our galaxy. The Roman writer Virgil said that this land was guarded by scorpion men (Scorpius), and the medieval Italian poet Dante said that this land was guarded by horse men, called centaurs (Sagittarius).
The Incas celebrated their rites of the dead at the December solstice, when their constellation of the Llama (in the western Scorpius) was rising. At this time, they believed, the entrance to the land of the dead was open and so they feasted in the presence of their sacred ancestors. To the Polynesians, the Milky Way was road along which souls traveled to the spirit world, and the Sump Indians of Nicaragua see 'mother scorpion' in the Milky Way as the destination of the deceased's soul. When we celebrate Halloween (All Hallows Eve) and (two days later) All Souls Day in the Christian tradition, we forget that when the first European pagans were celebrating at this time, it was at this time that the entrance to the land of the dead was rising. In Central and South America, the native Indians spend All Hallows Eve visiting the graves of their loved ones and feasting.
So how did people across five continents, in civilisations that had not even developed a written language, come to share the same ideas? How were these ideas shared between cultures that did not even know of each other's existence? There is a vital clue in the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Two Peruvian archeologists, brothers Fernando and Edgar Elorrieta, have discovered that in this valley, the valley of the Urubamba river, each of the constellations significant to the Incas is represented by a huge effigy of the appropriate animal - each effigy is made up of a whole mountainside. Some are natural, others have been created by the selective placement of agricultural terraces, but all of them have been there for around two thousand years. The two condor effigies (the Incas believed that the souls of the dead were carried to the land of the dead by a condor) both have pre-Columbian graves beneath them. Carved into a cliff overlooking this valley is the 45 metre (159 feet) tall face of a bearded man wearing the cap of a priest-astronomer, the face of Wiraqocha.
So who is this tall, bearded man who came to the Andes in 200 BC, carrying a staff and wearing a cap, and taught the Incas agriculture and astronomy? He was not Andean, as the Andean people do not have facial hair, so where did he come from? In fact, it appears to be the same man that taught agriculture and astronomy to each of the other four continents, each remembering this man as Father Time and identifying him with Saturn. Now we can assume that it could not possibly be the same person, but we cannot deny that these teachers must have come from the same race themselves, and have had at least some level of recent contact, seeing as they all maintained similar, if not identical, attire. Perhaps they were a race of explorers. This would certainly explain their interest in astronomy, as this would be the science necessary to them in order for them to navigate the lands and seas and cover the distances that would have taken them to every corner of the world.
###
So, the plot thickens...
The plot thickens indeed
Interesting stuff about the Incas.
I haven't done much research into the Incas. I've always been interested and researched the Mayan culture ever since my trip to Tikal in Guatemala. Its the site of the largest Mayan ruins ever.
May have to dig and correlate similarities between cultures. Could lead to some interesting finds.
Interesting stuff about the Incas.
I haven't done much research into the Incas. I've always been interested and researched the Mayan culture ever since my trip to Tikal in Guatemala. Its the site of the largest Mayan ruins ever.
May have to dig and correlate similarities between cultures. Could lead to some interesting finds.
Still an Original Pirate since Aug 2000
Wanna ride the Zamboni?
Wanna ride the Zamboni?
Been fighting a probable case of H1N1 so I've been remiss in researching the Maya/Inca connection so far, but did come across something very interesting about the Inca.
-from the article-
Now this is just fascinating.
Harvard anthropology professor Gary Urton is a leading expert on ancient South American civilizations. One of the biggest, the Inca, stood apart from other major civilizations of the era in having no written language. That is, unless Dr. Urton is correct and the khipu, complicated knotted strings that have long been assumed to be either simply decorative or a sort of "textile abacus" for performing calculations, turn out to actually be a 3-D written language built on 7-bit binary code.
Rest of article
-from the article-
Now this is just fascinating.
Harvard anthropology professor Gary Urton is a leading expert on ancient South American civilizations. One of the biggest, the Inca, stood apart from other major civilizations of the era in having no written language. That is, unless Dr. Urton is correct and the khipu, complicated knotted strings that have long been assumed to be either simply decorative or a sort of "textile abacus" for performing calculations, turn out to actually be a 3-D written language built on 7-bit binary code.
Rest of article
Still an Original Pirate since Aug 2000
Wanna ride the Zamboni?
Wanna ride the Zamboni?
Interesting piece on Mayan prophecy
Jose Arguelles gained notoriety for his role in the Harmonic Convergence on August 17, 1987 and his mystical book about the Maya calendar, The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology. Born of Mexican-American descent, the Mayan calendar became a childhood passion for him in the 1950s during the decade in which astronomers began to realize that Native Americans practiced a sophisticated astronomy. After more than 30 years of research, he is known as one of the world's foremost authorities of the Mayan calendar.
The overwhelming evidence of Mayan prophecy in the last decade of the millennia supports the accuracy of the calendar and the Arguelles' interpretation of the Dreamspell and Time Shift of July 26, 1992. After perceiving the final sequencing of the Mayan calendar in 1987, the Time Shift in 1992 was an adjustment of the annual calendar's beginning to July 26, so that the Dreamspell New Year falls on that date each year.
Since the Maya codices were destroyed during the European Conquest, the tables of dates and interpretations of codes were mostly destroyed. During the 500 years since the Conquest, Mayan tribes have adopted various new year dates and interpretations. In 1992, the University of Guatemala identified the July 26 date based on an eclipse of July 11, 1991 and the Dresden Codex. Arguelles interpreted that date as the new beginning of the solar year.
In 755 AD, Mayan Priests prophesied that the total solar eclipse of July 11, 1991 would herald two life altering events for humankind - Cosmic Awareness and Earth Changes. Shortly after 1:00 PM, on July 11, 1991, the prophecy seemingly began to unfold.
Beneath the eclipse that the Maya had labeled 'The Sixth Sun', a silvery disc shaped object hovered silently above Mexico City. 17 people, unknown to each other, in different locations of Mexico City, videotaped the UFO. This sighting became the earliest most documented mass sightings in history. For months, teams of international researchers from the U.S., Mexico, and Japan followed a wave of UFO activity that connected with the volcano, Mount Popocatepetl. Sightings still continue.
Based on the July, 1991 eclipse, Jose identified the July 26, 1992, Time Shift. Using a day-by-day count, Euro-American astronomers could finally synchronize their calendars with the Maya Priests. The visitors from the sky that Jose called the Galactic Maya in The Mayan Factor, had perhaps made good on their promise to return on that date.
These are all just theories.
Jose Arguelles gained notoriety for his role in the Harmonic Convergence on August 17, 1987 and his mystical book about the Maya calendar, The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology. Born of Mexican-American descent, the Mayan calendar became a childhood passion for him in the 1950s during the decade in which astronomers began to realize that Native Americans practiced a sophisticated astronomy. After more than 30 years of research, he is known as one of the world's foremost authorities of the Mayan calendar.
The overwhelming evidence of Mayan prophecy in the last decade of the millennia supports the accuracy of the calendar and the Arguelles' interpretation of the Dreamspell and Time Shift of July 26, 1992. After perceiving the final sequencing of the Mayan calendar in 1987, the Time Shift in 1992 was an adjustment of the annual calendar's beginning to July 26, so that the Dreamspell New Year falls on that date each year.
Since the Maya codices were destroyed during the European Conquest, the tables of dates and interpretations of codes were mostly destroyed. During the 500 years since the Conquest, Mayan tribes have adopted various new year dates and interpretations. In 1992, the University of Guatemala identified the July 26 date based on an eclipse of July 11, 1991 and the Dresden Codex. Arguelles interpreted that date as the new beginning of the solar year.
In 755 AD, Mayan Priests prophesied that the total solar eclipse of July 11, 1991 would herald two life altering events for humankind - Cosmic Awareness and Earth Changes. Shortly after 1:00 PM, on July 11, 1991, the prophecy seemingly began to unfold.
Beneath the eclipse that the Maya had labeled 'The Sixth Sun', a silvery disc shaped object hovered silently above Mexico City. 17 people, unknown to each other, in different locations of Mexico City, videotaped the UFO. This sighting became the earliest most documented mass sightings in history. For months, teams of international researchers from the U.S., Mexico, and Japan followed a wave of UFO activity that connected with the volcano, Mount Popocatepetl. Sightings still continue.
Based on the July, 1991 eclipse, Jose identified the July 26, 1992, Time Shift. Using a day-by-day count, Euro-American astronomers could finally synchronize their calendars with the Maya Priests. The visitors from the sky that Jose called the Galactic Maya in The Mayan Factor, had perhaps made good on their promise to return on that date.
These are all just theories.
Still an Original Pirate since Aug 2000
Wanna ride the Zamboni?
Wanna ride the Zamboni?
Great finds, Mike! Fascinating study. Especially entranced by the 3-D language possibilities and the possible Khipu encoding of it.
Sorry to hear the virus is bringing you low.
Found this:
http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/khipu/
And an article in Wired Magazine:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/khipu.html
Sorry to hear the virus is bringing you low.
Found this:
http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/khipu/
And an article in Wired Magazine:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/khipu.html
An archeologist mentioned a find at Caral Peru of wooden ladder like structures with woven cotten threads that may have similar usage.
The Caral site is the oldest in the New World at 4600 BC. Now the Inca civilization didn't appear until 15AD.
Coinkydink?
Maybe. But its a big gap in time between the 2 cultures. Seems there must be much more in between. A Missing Knot so to speak.
I'll post more if/when I can find something concrete on this subject.
*edit to add - the 4600BC date has been carbon date verified
The Caral site is the oldest in the New World at 4600 BC. Now the Inca civilization didn't appear until 15AD.
Coinkydink?
Maybe. But its a big gap in time between the 2 cultures. Seems there must be much more in between. A Missing Knot so to speak.
I'll post more if/when I can find something concrete on this subject.
*edit to add - the 4600BC date has been carbon date verified
Last edited by megman on 10-26-2009 11:31 PM, edited 1 time in total.
Still an Original Pirate since Aug 2000
Wanna ride the Zamboni?
Wanna ride the Zamboni?
