Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: finicky on 17/11/2012 17:17:37
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A review of the original verse which has sparked widespread expectations of a variety of cosmic conjunctions projected for 21 December 2012, reveals that the Long Count which it refers to, delimits a purely calendrical 'end-time' (not a cataclysm or galactic alignment).
The seventh-century verse on 'Tortuguero Monument 6' from southern Tabasco, Mexico (reportedly the only recognized inscription preserving an explicit reference to B'ak'tun 13) reads: "It will be completed the 13th b'ak'tun. / It is 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in / and it will happen a 'seeing' (?). / It is the display of B'olon-Yokte' / in a great 'investiture'." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon)]
The translators have tentatively identified two of the three elements in the name of the putative god 'B'olon-Yokte' as "nine" and "god" (with 'OK-te' undeciphered). [Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod, 'What Could Happen in 2012: A Re-Analysis of the 13-Bak'tun Prophecy on Tortuguero Monument 6.' 2010: Wayeb Notes 34: University of Copenhagen: European Association of Mayanists, pp1-68]
As shown in my books [http://archive.org/search.php?query=drumbolis (http://archive.org/search.php?query=drumbolis)], numerous ancient cultures recognized that the lunar cycle known as the lunation was dominated by nine identifiable phases to which they piously ascribed exceptional divinity (the Egyptian Ennead or Paut being the best-known example). The only phases in the lunation identifiable on sight (opposing crescents, opposed half-moons, twin full moons, first waning phase and two successive dark nights), the dominion of these focal deities was the calendar.
Given the tendered translation of the recognized elements in the construct 'B'olon-Yokte' ("nine gods", arguably representing 'the completed lunation'), the possibility emerges that the anticipated 'end-time' of B'ak'tun 13 could well signal an integral compound lunar interval.
One b'ak'tun (20 k'atun) is equal to 144,000 days (a k'atun of 7200 days being equal to 20 tun, which each comprise 18 twenty-day uinal, or 360 days). Thus 13 b'ak'tun equal 1,872,000 days.
The verse in question, in other words, appears to purport that "a display of B'olon-Yokte' in a great investiture" will ensue every 1,872,000 days.
Parcelling 1,872,000 days into lunations (each extending 29.530588 days, as scientifically computed) produces a quotient of 63,391.897242 lunations (equivalent to 5125 years 133 days 17 hours 24 minutes 4 seconds).
Given the protracted difficulty in calculating the mean measure of the lunation empirically, it is not inconceivable that the culture responsible for the verse (Mayan, Olmec, Zoque or other) arrived at a computation which divides precisely into 1,872,000 days. As 63,391.897242 lunations so nearly approaches the figure 63,392, their putative 'measure of mean lunation' may be computed simply by dividing 63,392 into 1,872,000 days.
The result (29.530540 days) deviates from the modern measure of mean lunation (29.530588 days) by a mere .000048 days or 4.1472 seconds. In other words, this putative ancient calculation comes within 4 seconds of the current scientific measure (a remarkable feat given that lunations vary in duration). The later Dresden Codex attests to Mayan interest in a measure of mean lunation (surrendering, however, the somewhat less accurate average of 29.5302 days).
In actuality 63,392 lunations consume 1,872,003.034496 days; meaning that the anticipated conjunction (or "investiture") of 'observable lunations' (or "display") with 'a round number of days' would 'converge' just under 50 minutes after midnight, 25 December 2012, granted the conventional starting date (11 August 3114 bc). Which ironically approaches Michael Coe's initial projection of the 24th (The Maya, 1966, p149).
Needless to say, because of the discrepancy between ancient and actual mean measures of lunation, no convergence of 'an integral compound of lunations' with 'a round number of days' ensues.
December New Moon, moreover, falls on the 13th (at 8:42 GMT), not the 21st, 23rd, 24th or 25th, as the Long Count cycle has been variously interpreted.
Granted my thesis (that the Long Count projects an integral compound of complete lunations), this means that the presumed start date of the Mayan calendar must be out by 9 days, and the 'end-time' should be backdated accordingly from the 21st to the 12th (the day before December New Moon): a provocative 'convergence' by current standards (12.12.12), if their calculation weren't in fact flawed.
Had the Maya (or whoever made the calculation) ever actually witnessed one of these 13-B'ak'tun 'convergences' it would have become painfully clear that their long-held belief was terribly in error.
As prevailing archaeoastronomical theories about the 'end-time' focus on the 25,920-year cycle governing the wobble of the earth's axis, it bears commenting that such Precession theorists (influenced heavily by Hertha von Dechend's thesis in Hamlet's Mill, 1969) too readily overlook the far more conspicuous variability (or wobble) of the lunar cycles, in their interpretation of ancient texts: [1] the lunation; [2] the 230-lunation Course cycle; and [3] the 235-lunation Phase cycle.
'Quetzalcoatl', for example, accords with the lunation, a natural "plumed serpent" in soaring for 27 nights and crawling during the two dark nights with no moon in the sky. The waxing arc of the lunation, in other words, is characterized by the quetzal; the waning arc by coatl.
Accordingly, the four 'first men' embody the quarters of the lunation: their identification with the jaguar, a spotted cat, symbolizing the aggregate phases resident in each quarter (with the rarer black jaguar reflecting the rarer dark nights). The esoteric significance of the term 'Balam' ("sorcerer" as well as "jaguar"), thereby alludes to the computational 'sorcery' of the complex Mayan calendar. While 'Xbalba' merely refers to the underworld in which the moon is confined during the two dark nights.
Nick Drumbolis
Myth as Math abstract 15