Originally posted by Etsivä Romppainen
How could the Mayans predict such future events? I quess that the only explanation is if they had contact with ancient astronauts.
I've seen so many posts like this and honestly it gets me every time.
Q: Exactly what "prediction" did the Mayan's make?
A: None. They developed a calander, THREE to be exact. The tzolkin, the haab and the long count.
The tzolkin (a 260 day cycle calander) was, when you get to brass tacks about it, an agricultural calander. Often associated with either good luck or
bad luck, history would believe that they based their crops on it.
The haab most closely resembles our gregorian calander. It's really a 360 day calander with 5 extra days attached to it, or what they called uayeb.
The days of the haab were numbered 0 to 19 (20 days). The mayans are actually credited with being the first civilization to recognize the value of
zero. In fact, for all intents and purposes, had they not (while im sure someone else may have) we wouldn't be typing here and exchanging comments on
ATS as, the value of zero is an integral part of this computing environment.
The long count (the one being discussed here) is the one that seems at the point of most contention. The Long Count is really a mixed base-20/base-18
representation of a number and what it most likely represents is the count of number of days since the beginning of the Mayan era.
The basic unit of the Long Count is the kin (day) and is the final component of the long count calander.
The Long Count is broken down thusly:
uinal 1 uinal = 20 kin = 20 days
tun 1 tun = 18 uinal = 360 days = approx. 1 year
katun 1 katun = 20 tun = 7,200 days = approx. 20 years
baktun 1 baktun = 20 katun = 144,000 days = approx. 394 years
The kin, tun and katun are numbered from 0 to 19..the uinal are numbered from 0 to 17, and baktun numbered from 1 to 13.
Now, given the nature and sheer NUMBERS involved with the Long Count calander, one could imagine that the ONLY "prediction" that the Mayans made was
not one of the ENDING of the world, but of their own civilization. They were mathematical scholars, geniuses. AND they were astute which most likely
led them to draw the conclusion (based on their OWN current events) that
their civilization would not have the longevity of a singular Long
Count. Given that, why would they choose to represent a "restart" of it if they knew it would be of no value to any future generation?
AB1