Did the Maya know abut precession, about the galaxy? Aveni takes a scientific definition of the galaxy and says no. This is like saying ancient people didn’t know about sex because they didn’t know about the genetic code. He requires that they had a spiral dynamic visual concept of the galaxy on par with modern scientific models. He describes and defines the galaxy’s center and midplane (equator) with scientific concepts and terms, and assumes a much greater need for precision than my theory requires. He has said that the alignment could be seen to be valid for five hundred years; ignoring the more precise dark rift and the middle range of the Milky Way’s width that could indeed be extrapolated.
At one point, Aveni showed a composite photograph of our Milky Way and asserted that the nuclear bulge of the Galactic Center was not compelling at all for anyone looking up at it. He seemed to ignore the fact that the nuclear bulge region was already demonstrably significant for the ancient Maya, due to the fact that the Crossroads and the southern terminus of the dark rift are located within the bulge and play a significant role in the Creation Mythology. He also used a fairly poor photograph of the Milky Way to illustrate his point, which was quite apparent and should have insulted the intelligence of his highly intelligent audience—if they were willing to see through his ruse. His interest in dismissing the visual significance of the Galactic Center was revealed in this ploy. In the clear night skies near the equator, the Milky Way explodes with distinction and definition, many dark cloud features are readily apparent, and the nuclear bulge looks even more like a puffy, bulging, and pregnant serpent or other animal than it does when viewed from temperate latitudes. That’s why the Inca see a mother and baby llama in that area. Furthermore, Aveni did not entertain or apparently consider that the ancient Maya probably had a greater acuity of vision than do modern humans. Progressive Maya scholars such as Barbara MacLeod now see inscriptional evidence for the ancient Maya tracking Uranus, which the majority of modern people would not be able to pick out with the naked eye even if they were shown exactly where it is. The boundaries of the Milky Way, much wider in the nuclear bulge than on the opposite side of the sky, would have been obvious to them.
There are other good examples that reveal Aveni’s dismissive attitude toward 2012 and 2012 authors.61 The real clincher came at the end of his talk, in an exchange we had during the Q & A. After almost an hour, he had failed to address the most compelling first step that a rational investigator would take in examining 2012 (one that I had included in the six points I had sent to him and that he acknowledged receiving). I was surprised and disappointed, and realized I’d have to make a stand so that, at least in a thumbnail sketch, the audience members would have a chance to work with the facts of the matter.
Aveni completed his talk with a quote from Shakespeare, to the effect that we should look within for the solution to our problems, not to the stars. Eric Thompson used quotes from classical philosophers as epigrams in his books, a habit that bothered Michael Coe. I think it’s nice to use thoughtful philosophical sentiments to change the pace of thought. The similarity between Aveni and Thompson, however, is more than epigram deep. It seems to me that Aveni is the new Thompson, the new gatekeeper who will always insist on more evidence and never believe you have enough.
After the applause died down, the crowd was invited to speak. I asked my question: “Well, that was a lot funnier than I thought it was going to be [laughter]. Apart from all the millenarian distractions, I think the most pressing question in this whole 2012 thing is: Is the 2012 cycle ending an intentional artifact of the calendrical tradition? And in one of your very first slides, you showed that the end date is December 21, 2012, which is an accurate December solstice. I’m surprised you didn’t revisit the idea first put forward by Munro Edmonson over twenty years ago in his Book of the Year, where he wondered, ‘Hmm, the 13-Baktun cycle ends on an accurate solstice… I really doubt that that’s a coincidence.’ So it suggests that there is some kind of intentionality built into the placement of the end date, and so how should we go about exploring how that manifests in Maya ideology and eschatology?”
Aveni: “Yeah, I agree with that, and I have noted that they started the Long Count on, or within a day or two of, the day of zenith passage… John Justeson’s looked at that. I don’t doubt that they might have done it.”
The placement of the zero date in 3114 BC on an accurate zenith passage date at a specific latitude does not require much in terms of astronomical calculation—it’s simply the observation of no shadows at high noon, and it doesn’t shift with precession. The end date’s location on the solstice, however, implies an accurate knowledge of the tropical year, to at least an impressive several decimal places.
JMJ: “I’m talking about the end date in 2012.”
Aveni: “I don’t doubt they may have placed the end date of the cycle on the solstice. The theory that they did is that pre-Classic sites are more solstitially oriented, so there’s nothing unique about Izapa, nor about its ballcourt in terms of its alignment…”
Izapa is the only ballcourt that points right at the December solstice sunrise, and Izapa is the only site that contains a coherent fugue of carved monuments that can be read with a high degree of comprehension as to their intended mythological and astronomical meaning. Aveni referred to a paper he wrote in 1990, which wasn’t published until 2000, which he said showed how the pre-Classic period “was the beginning of the calendar.” But in it he never stated that the solstice alignments of the early sites he examined made them a likely locus of the Long Count calendar’s origin.62
Aveni: “However, I will not, and have no desire to, take that argument any further and bring in the galaxy—that’s where I totally push back, because I think this concept of what a galaxy is, is totally alien to Maya thought.”
He claims that some have accused him of “dumbing down the ancestors” and admits that he is “employing an idea [of the galaxy] that comes from Western science that doesn’t have anything to do with the Maya.”
JMJ: “But they were aware of the Milky Way, right?”
Aveni: “Sure they were.”
JMJ: “Well, that’s the galaxy.”
Aveni: “But it’s not a tree…”
JMJ: “Well, they didn’t have to have the same concept of it as modern science does…”
Aveni: “They don’t, but then you start talking about the plane of the galaxy and the center of the Milky Way galaxy… Why do you speak about the center of the galaxy? Would they know that it was the center of the galaxy—it’s perceived as a blanket of stars and gas that goes across the sky.”
JMJ: “Well, there’s evidence that they thought about that part of the galaxy as a center because it’s where the Milky Way crosses over the ecliptic, and crosses symbolize the idea of cosmic center—on thrones and in Maya cosmology in general.”
Aveni: “I suppose, but I don’t see it as an emphatic point in the calendar; we can talk more about that outside.”
As for the ancient Maya conception of the nuclear bulge of the Galactic Center as being, in fact, a center, my “Open Letter to Mayanists and Astronomers” of 1999, which I had posted on the Aztlan discussion board, presented the evidence for this concisely:
Among the modern-day Quiché Maya, the dark-rift is called the xibalba be. This means “road to the underworld.” In the ancient Maya Creation text, the Popol Vuh, this same feature serves as a road to the underworld and is also called the Black Road. Associated iconography with the “underworld portal” concept includes caves, monster mouths, and birthing portals…. This demonstrates that the Maya understood the region of the Galactic Center as a source-point or birth place. The cross formed by the Milky Way with the ecliptic near Sagittarius has been identified at Palenque, among the Quiché and Chortí Maya, and elsewhere as the Mayan Sacred Tree. In the Popol Vuh, it is the Crossroads. The cross symbol, according to accepted epigraphic and iconographic interpretation (e.g., on thrones), denotes the concept of “center” and usually context
ually implies a “cosmic” or “celestial” center. The concept of “cosmic center” and the principle of world-centering was important to Mesoamerican astronomers, city planners, and Maya kings—kings who symbolically occupied and ruled from the “cosmic center.” Thus, the Maya, via the Sacred Tree/Cosmic Cross symbology, understood the region of the Galactic Center to be a center. Center and birthplace—understandings that are true to the Galactic Center’s nature.63
I had one more important point to make.
JMJ: “Okay, but one last thing—do you think that when the Long Count was first put in place, say 2,200 years ago, did those sky-watchers have the kind of astronomical sophistication to have a really good estimate for the tropical year, because they would have had to.”
Aveni: “I think that they did; they certainly could have. They were working toward an understanding of the haab (365-day year) and I think, and I’ve written about this in Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico (first edition), that they probably were aware of the slow drift or movement of the stars against the background at the horizon, although I think there’s no way you can assume awareness of a 26,000-year cycle.”
My own theory, in its basic form, doesn’t require that they were aware of the full 26,000-year cycle. However, both MacLeod’s work with the 3-11 Pik formula in the inscriptions and Michael Grofe’s work on the Serpent Series provide evidence for an accurate knowledge of long-range precessional intervals. But Aveni skimmed over brief mentions of their work. They are nothing more than “a coincidence with the numerology of 72 years.” He believes those intervals and dates were probably relevant as stations but “doesn’t get” MacLeod’s connection of those precessional stations to the base date. Okay, progress—he simply doesn’t understand what MacLeod has found.
My turn was up and he went on to other audience questions. It should be pretty clear that Aveni’s comments are well presented, but he didn’t really offer a serious consideration of the evidence that 2012 was meaningful to the ancient Maya, and that meaning revolves around the alignment of the solstice sun with the dark rift. That’s the bare-bones scenario. Perhaps a public talk is not the appropriate place for such information, although that’s what the Tulane 2012 conference organizers promised.
I followed up on his invitation to speak with him “outside” on Sunday, during the break in the panel discussion session. His gregarious nature made it difficult to have a calm conversation, and he began getting upset when I talked about the unique nature of the Izapan ballcourt’s alignment to the solstice horizon. He was, however, very generous in offering me the citation for the article he published on solstice alignments at Izapa and other pre-Classic sites, called “Water, Mountain, Sky.”
After the conference I went to Tulane’s library and found it in an obscure volume, and xeroxed it. Sure enough, he had been to Izapa in 1990 and measured the horizon orientation. He had the hard data on Izapa and other sites, and concluded that a solstice-oriented calendrical cosmology was prevalent during the pre-Classic in southern Mesoamerica. And, it should be added, these solstice-oriented sites belonged to the Isthmian cultural sphere that gave rise to the earliest Long Count dates. He stated specifically that the ballcourt was aligned to the solstice.64 His data corresponded well with my own data and measurements.65 It is important to now have the published measurement data to refer to, but his observation that Izapa was oriented to the solstice is, after all, implied in the maps from the Brigham Young University studies.66 His data nevertheless lend support to my work, especially in consideration of the unique arrangement of monuments in the Izapan ballcourt.
I have said for years that scholars mistrusted my own measurements and observations at the site, and that no one seemed to have previously noted it. Aveni apparently did in 1990, but his paper wasn’t published until 2000, two years after my book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 was published. He began his essay with a statement I really liked, which implies a sensitivity to taking into account the entire environment, including astronomy, when interpreting the conceptual factors that the ancient Maya embraced when designing their towns: “Much of Mesoamerican ceremonial architecture is interpretable as an ideological ‘text’ that makes manifest in the work of humankind the observed principles of cosmic order that the people acted out in their religious temples.”67 If this attitude was carefully applied to Izapa’s monuments, and how they are oriented to solstices, volcanoes, and celestial features (which are indeed part of the “environment”), Aveni would see that my work is based in the same interpretive strategy that he subscribes to.
My overall experience of the conference was very positive. I can’t recount all the personal discussions with the Tedlocks, Harvey Bricker, Matthew Looper, David Stuart, and other speakers; it was abuzz with intriguing and exciting ideas. Dennis Tedlock answered my correlation question in no uncertain terms with full-throttle support for the December 21 correlation, saying, “We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if Lounsbury hadn’t made that mistake.”68
I met in person many students and scholars I’d not met before, including Carl Calloway, Matthew Looper, Mark Van Stone, Lloyd Anderson, John Justeson, Marguerite Paquin, Marc Zender, Allan Christiansen, and David Stuart. I was heartened by the efforts they had made to understand Maya civilization, and I realized that a great deal of progress and new discoveries have happened in the last ten years. I’d been a bit out of the loop with the new information, and realized I needed to renew my studies, and what I would find would likely lend new support for my end-date alignment theory.
This new support would come sooner than I thought. Probably the most important meeting I had at the conference was with Michael Grofe. I’ve mentioned that Barbara MacLeod, Michael, and I had been in e-mail and phone communication for almost a year, working out the details on a documentary concept. It now seemed clear that I had allies that were willing to entertain the possibility that the solstice 2012 placement, as well as the end-date alignment, was not a coincidence. I was impressed with Michael’s PhD dissertation, in which he had courageously mentioned my work. To do this in a dissertation was probably not advisable, as my work is generally cast aside by scholars. However, he treated my ideas fairly and accurately, and offered an entire reconstruction of the Serpent Series numbers, showing precessional calculations of great accuracy. This was really good breakthrough scholarship. Other essays he sent me were equally compelling, rigorous, and insightful. Barb and Michael’s open-minded attitudes have rekindled my confidence after many years of misunderstandings, plagiarism, and time-wasting debates.
Something happened after my meeting with Michael Grofe at the Tulane conference, and I began to suspect there might be another way of deciphering references to 2012. I scanned my astronomy software, looked at other dates recorded at Tortuguero, and exchanged e-mails with Michael. Together we started finding patterns, and within a few weeks a truly unsuspected vindication of my work unfolded. Beyond any sense of personal satisfaction, these new discoveries open up a greater understanding of how the ancient Maya thought about 2012, which in my view has lasting meaning for two reasons: (1) this is the best way to approach understanding 2012; (2) these results will survive all the trendy 2012 models and millennial madness. Here is what we found.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Galactic Alignment Theory: Update
It’s not a coincidence.
—BARB MACLEOD
The newest of the new discoveries emerged immediately in the wake of the Tulane conference. But they occurred on the fringes, in open-minded exchanges among Barbara MacLeod, Michael Grofe, and me. They were driven by a breakthrough in a documentary film on 2012 that I’d been collaborating on for almost three years with Warren Miller Films. In 2006, I was invited by screenwriter and project director Hans Rosenwinkel to present my work at the Warren Miller Films offices in Boulder. I gave presentations and for two years the script was worked and reworked, being recalibrated with my ongoing feedback. There was interest at Nova and PBS in funding the project. It seemed to be
hovering in no-man’s-land when Barb MacLeod e-mailed me in January of 2008 with her findings on the 3-11 Pik formula. She alerted me to the good news by her subject line: “It’s not a coincidence!”
Barb’s findings began with data recorded at Tikal, first noted by Matthew Looper.1 Barb’s close examination of these data revealed a consistent application of periods of time separated by 8,660 days. Usually these occurred in steps of three and were rooted in a Calendar Round position prior to the era Creation of 3114 BC. Barb next noted Nikolai Grube’s realization that identical parallel dates were generated if the base date was shifted forward 11 Baktuns.2 The three date stations occurred at 8,660-day intervals, but when combined equaled precessional steps of just under 72 years, the number of years in one degree (or day) of precessional shift. (The “circle” of Maya calculation may use 365 degrees, or days, rather than the 360 used in Western geometry.) The locations of each precessional “power station” in time were significant because of their precessional resonance with the base date, the era Creation. She calls this precessional mechanism the “3-11 Pik formula” and finds evidence for it in the inscriptions of Copán and elsewhere.3
Not simply an abstract mathematical operation, this calendrical and astronomical framework was utilized in rites of Maya kingship. When a king passed through one of these temporal power stations, he gained added authority and power. Kings would often pass through two power stations during their reign, but only a few would live through three. The passage represented a cosmological relationship, via precessional resonance, with the Creation event. Furthermore, these 3-11 Pik references often appear in combination with vast distance numbers and cycles of deep time. Barb’s work suggests that precession was not only accurately calculated by the ancient Maya, but was used in a widespread paradigm that related kings to era-inauguration dates and the Creation mythos.
The 2012 Story Page 28