Originally posted by pixilair
But I'm confused because someone said that the mayan calander was misinterpreted because it really ends 2020 instead of 2012.
Firstus... "western translators" don't exist (I'm being overly picky here) but archaeologists do exist. They are the ones reading the stones.
The Long Count cycle does indeed end in 2012. The original sources and translated stones/artifacts/etc did not report what it is that the Maya
expected at the end of the Long Count cycle:
www.wikipedia.org...
If you'll look at the resources out there, you will find the more oddball stuff comes from ordinary citizens who aren't really able to translate the
Mayan symbols themselves. It's not coming from archaeologists or anyone even associated with the digs (people who would do this directly.) You get
all sorts of mind-fluff, including things like "According to the Maya, beginning March 15, 1999, a powerful gateway may be accessed by those who
reach a place of attunement with universal - primordial energy. "
Guess what. There's nothing like that written on any of the temples and in any of the original source material (including the material from the
Conquistadores.)
Why do those things exist? Someone has a Bright Idea and hasn't actually studied the culture -- and wants to sell you a book. Poke around the PBS
site, and you'll get a better handle on what we really know (and how much outright fakery there is on the nets.)
www.pbs.org...
[B]RESEARCH:[/B]
Some good info on the various date systems used by the Mayans and why they needed a complex calendar:
webexhibits.org...
Anthro lecture notes on Mayan Calendar and sacred cycles (note that they only knew the planets through Saturn... and not Uranus, Neptune, Pluto):
www.ku.edu...
School web page, but good links:
www.internet-at-work.com...
