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DECRYPTING THE SACRED Origin of the Mayan calendric system |
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This site introduces an ancient system of coded information that the Maya inherited and refined, but that is only now being recognized. Indirect evidence suggests an origin over ten thousand years ago, while direct evidence traces the system to roughly seven thousand years ago. Given the duration and regional scope of the system, the amount of evidence potentially remaining to be explored is staggering. A book is in preparation to detail the system. In the meantime, this site is meant to acquaint people with some of the more important issues. If learning to read glyphs was a big deal for archeology, then learning to interpret explicit communications over twice as old as the oldest glyph should be proportionately more important yet. Most of the evidence has been accessible to the public for many years and has escaped notice primarily because the system implies more advanced capabilities than are generally conceded for early Americans. My impetus is to share what I have learned so others can participate and extend the knowledge. Arguments that validate the newly discovered system will have to await publication of my book, but many implications of the system can be examined immediately. Please feel free to contact me if you have relevant insights or questions about the project. Counting of time follows well-established structures Diagramming what is known is known about the long count, an unambiguous reference count from the epoch start based on the tun structure. In addition to the long count, continuously repeating cycles of 260 and 365 days were maintained. Not addressed here are why the long count is founded on a combination of 260 and 360, or how the long count relates to the vague count of 365 days, or the tropical year duration of 365.2422 days. Those particularly relevant questions will be answered later. A rhythmic sequence of thirteen numbers with twenty named days for 260 days before it repeats is known as a tzolk’in. A similar sequence, called a haab’, matched twenty sequential numbers with names for each of eighteen sets of twenty day “months,” plus five unlucky days in a nineteenth month. Meshing the tzolk’in count with the haab’ count required 52 years (18,980 days) called a calendar round, at the end of which a celebration of renewal was held. Lunar standstill cycle suggests why time was counted by increments of 260, 360, and 365 days A 18.61-year (6797 days) cycle of the moon’s travel along the horizon provides the most likely explanation for the prominent “arbitrary” (260/360/365) cycles in Mesoamerican calendric practice that are out of step with seasonal phenomena. At standstill, the moon is in the plane of the earth’s travel about the sun, a necessary condition for an eclipse. The principle of clock arithmetic allows us to calculate the eclipse year by dividing the standstill cycle by the number of tropical years plus one. Dividing the tropical year by 360 degrees produces a conversion factor that transforms 6797 days to 6700 degrees, leading to a 360-day tun that can be counted as integer cycles without end. Conveniently, 6760 days factors into 260 times 26 and falls between 6797 and 6700 days. When multiplied by 365 and divided by 260, it yields 9490, or half the calendar round. Counting cycles of 260 days by repetitions of thirteen and twenty days may have facilitated prediction of eclipses. Counting by integer intervals of 260, 360 and 365 allowed reconciliation of solar and lunar cycles when combined with the 6797-day interval between times when the moon appeared to stand still before retracing its slow migration over the horizon. Integrated cycles in a calendric system can be demonstrated by graphic mapping of an intentional structure The possibility of an origin at winter solstice 10,250 years ago is demonstrated through projecting known counting structures into the deep past to find the start of counting. Important milestones of the calendar have been given number and name designations with relationships that should have been highly unlikely unless they were generated by conscious intent and design. Furthermore, six major cycles appear to have been deliberately integrated by beginning counting from the same event. Hierophany reveals its influence through exceptional attention to significant events Special observations that seem to reveal sacred insights from otherwise ordinary events are common throughout Mesoamerica. Frequently monumented alignments of solstice, lunar standstill and zenithal transit appear to derive from a spiritual belief that special phenomena afford communication with a higher power. The objects of such attention tend to be cyclic, transitory, dependable, and meaningful. Meaning is usually arrived at by combining the alignments with a virtual “key” essential for decoding the message. The application of hierophany is thought to have lead to graphic methods for preserving sacred data, thousands of years prior to glyph notation. Stand-alone demonstration by a chert eccentric representing the Pleiades A chert eccentric with redundant coding validates principles by which symmetric eccentrics were designed with virtual geometric frames to represent data with a standard unit of measure. Confirmation via tangible clues from archeology Until they are confirmed, claims are cheap. Archaic mounds, chert eccentrics, and standard units of measure indicate when and where the system was practiced. Multiple approaches were used to test and validate claims, including: site plans scaled to calendar numbers, low range of variation in the standard unit, unambiguous representation of meaningful numbers, validation of mound locations using n-point lines, routine redundancy, and traits that persist for thousands of years.
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