Slashdot Mirror
Archaeologists Find Oldest Known Mayan Calendar
sciencehabit writes "A team of American researchers has discovered a small trove of ancient Mayan texts in a surprising place. In a paper published online today in Science, researchers report finding Mayan astronomical tables and other texts painted and incised on the walls of a 1200-year-old residential building at the site of Xultún in Guatemala. The newly discovered astronomical tables are at least 500 years older than those preserved in the Maya codices, giving researchers a new glimpse of science at the height of the Maya civilization. 'I think we are all astonished by this find,' says Stephen Houston, an archaeologist at Brown University who was not part of the team."
But which time zone?
if those franciscan pricks hadn't torched all of the maya records we wouldn't have to try and decipher this shit off some half-buried wall. all of it was well preserved on codices but the church figured it would be easier to convert them all if they incinerated their cultural history.
More importantly, the records they found at the site indicate that the Mayans viewed the calendar as CYCLICAL and just like our Bad Girls of Linux Wall Calendar, the world doesn't end when the last day of the Calendar is reached.
Notably absent was the Thirteenth Crystal Skull and ancient UFO instruction manual.
Buy Christmas presents this year?
Plan my New Year's Eve party?
Pay my taxes?
Vote?
This sucks...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Let me cowardly start this one
http://www.khanacademy.org/math/vi-hart/v/doodling-in-math--spirals--fibonacci--and-being-a-plant--1-of-3
http://www.khanacademy.org/math/vi-hart/v/doodling-in-math-class--spirals--fibonacci--and-being-a-plant--2-of-3
http://www.khanacademy.org/math/vi-hart/v/doodling-in-math--spirals--fibonacci--and-being-a-plant--part-3-of-3
What if these numbers natural numbers are simply how nature works and anything else would be a conspiracy!
Smart people still lurk here.
'I think we are all astonished by this find,' says Stephen Houston, an archaeologist at Brown University who was not part of the team."
What an insightful comment by someone related with this find. Oh wait...
According to my calculations, the world ended about three years ago when a black Kenyan Marxist anti-colonialist Nazi with a fake birth certificate seized power in the United States in order to arrange the theft of the Anglo-Hungarian Crown Jewels which were stored inside Lincoln's memorial.
It goes boom at 24 hours in every timezone simultaneously, obviously.
Rolling apocalypse
It doesn't end as such. The Mayan had epochs. Sort of like if our dates got to the year 999, then instead of moving to 1000, they moved to 1 again, but called it the millennium of [something].
The first age was where the gods created the world, but the animals and humans could not speak and so were unable to worship the gods. In the second age, the gods created humans out of mud, then in the third, out of wood. The gods were not pleased with either of these, so they wiped them out and started over - in the fourth age where we are now. This whole 2012 thing is simply the end of the fourth epoch of the Mayan calendar.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Oh I just remembered something.. I was making cookies for a website, and while setting the expiry date of the cookies, an idea struck. Guess what did I set the expiry date - 21/12/2012 !! Such an epic easter egg !
Have gnu, will travel.
So, in either case, we're still getting wiped out. Good to know!
But which time zone?
Mayan central time
According to my iPhone there is no calendar beyond Wednesday 2nd April 2149. It won't even let you book an all day event, so the end must come sometime during that day.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.