The 2012 Story (32 page)

Despite Justeson’s well-considered critique, the fact remains that, no matter how you fudge it, the solstice positioning of the end date is beyond statistical chance. His own final stats prove this. A 1-in-6 chance does not mean you can look away. And so rational scholars alert to the dictates of statistics should proceed on the evidence that it’s not a coincidence and begin an investigation that generates questions. This was the position I took twenty years ago, with interesting results. As a rational investigator, I’ve uncovered perspectives and evidence in support of the likelihood of intentionality—at Izapa, in the Creation Myth, in the structure of the Long Count, in rites of kingship, and in the symbolism of the ballgame. I’ve presented it to scholars with a persistence that has gained me the status of honorary
persona non grata
, and they have largely dismissed it, usually without offering specific critiques. Actually, maybe not the honorary part.

After one particularly exhausting exchange with a bevy of scholars on the Aztlan e-list regarding, for the hundredth time, the relevance of the solstice placement in 2012, an important missive was sent to me privately from Maya epigrapher Barb MacLeod. The subject line read: “not coincidence!” She wrote: “I see the exchanges of the last couple of days as a prompt to share something with you of great importance and relevance from the epigraphic record. It’s something I discovered less than a month ago.”
⁷
What she found is revolutionary and lends indirect support to my end-date alignment theory. Barb’s open-minded and progressive scholarship has been behind many breakthroughs including, as I mentioned in Chapter 4, Linda Schele’s astro-mythological ideas on the Maya Creation Mythology.

The first treatment of 2012 by a scholar in a journal that other scholars might recognize was Robert Sitler’s “The 2012 Phenomenon” in the academic journal
Nova Religio
. It appeared in 2006. He took the twofold approach of assessing the historical record and comments of the modern Maya, looking for references to 2012. He assessed the popular treatment of the 2012 topic in the marketplace as well as my book
Maya Cosmogenesis 2012
, calling it “by far the best-researched of the numerous books that focused on the 2012 date.”
⁸
(By the way, Geoff Stray tells me that my book was the second book ever published that had 2012 in the title; the first was published in 1883, called
Transits of Venus: A Popular Account of Past and Coming Transits from the First Observed by Horrocks A.D. 1639 to the Transit of A.D. 2012.
)

Sitler wrote his article prior to the Tortuguero monument becoming common knowledge, so his article therefore did not treat it and followed the consensus view that there were no references to 2012. He thus didn’t see any explicit references to 2012 in the epigraphy of the Classic Period. However, Robert’s online “13 Baktun” resource has added the Tortuguero information and various updates from contemporary Maya voices, gathered on his recent trips to highland Guatemala.
⁹
Upon interviewing modern Maya spokespeo ple, such as Don Alejandro, he found that whenever they said anything about 2012, it could be traced to modern authors such as José Argüelles. Geoff Stray pointed out this tendency in his 2005 book
Beyond 2012
, which Sitler called “a recent publication that promises to be the most comprehensive book on 2012 to date.”
¹⁰
Sitler also pointed out that it’s not surprising that the Long Count information does not survive, even in traditional areas of highland Guatemala, since the Long Count stopped being carved in stone more than a thousand years ago.

Robert provided an accurate summary of my theory and wrote that “the lack of convincing proof the ancient Maya were actually aware of precession may prevent Jenkins’s ideas from ever gaining broader academic acceptance.” This assertion is slightly misleading, as there is in fact a great deal of evidence that the ancient Maya were aware of precession. The archaeological work of Marion Popenoe Hatch at La Venta (ca. 1200 BC) and Tak’alik Ab’aj (ca. 200 BC) shows that temples and stone sighting devices were aligned with certain stars and adjusted, through time, to account for precession. Scholars such as Eva Hunt, Gordon Brotherston, and even Anthony Aveni have argued and stated that precessional knowledge would have been par for the course. And today we have new findings, by Maya scholars Barbara MacLeod and Michael Grofe, showing precessional and sidereal-year calculations in the Classic Period inscriptions and the Maya’s Dresden Codex.

Geoff Stray registered corrections to Sitler’s essay, on the grounds that non-Maya sources of information—intuitive dreams, prophecy, and information from non-ordinary states of consciousness—have also pointed to 2012. A lively exchange between the two ensued, which illustrates how fact-based discussions can and should unfold. In the process, Geoff noted that “academics that are held in such awe often make errors that are repeated by researchers into the Maya calendars. Anthony Aveni’s end date of 8 December 2012 was calculated in the Julian calendar, but he failed to state this. This date is equivalent to 21 December 2012 Gregorian. . . . Aveni places the start at 12 August 3114 BC . . . this is calculated in the Gregorian calendar, which makes Aveni’s dates even more confusing, with the start and end dates calculated in different calendars.”
¹¹

Sitler’s look at Classic Period epigraphy suggested nothing directly relevant to 2012. What we seem to find in the Creation Monuments are exclusively focused on the 13-Baktun cycle beginning in 3114 BC. These monuments, however, from Coba, Quiriguá, Palenque, and other Classic Period sites, were carved at least seven hundred years after the Long Count was first committed to stone. They document a Creation paradigm involving the zenith passage of the three hearthstones, stars underneath Orion’s Belt. The zenith was thought of by the ancient Maya as a cosmic center, and the Creation of the current era was believed to happen in relation to this cosmic center, symbolized as a throne. It’s not that surprising that epigraphy doesn’t tell us a lot about ideologies current with the origins of the Long Count, circa 100 BC (or possibly centuries earlier), because mythology and cosmology in that era were conveyed with pictures, a complex iconographic code that epigraphers haven’t paid enough attention to.

When scholars look for “documentation” on Maya ideas, they tend to focus on epigraphy. (This was true for Mark Van Stone’s 2012 study, published in late 2008 with the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies.) But iconographic expressions, such as those found at Izapa, should also be allowed. They are, we might say, more relevant than the hieroglyphic writing that evolved centuries later, as they speak more directly for the time and place of the Long Count’s origins. Epigraphic texts of the Classic Period, properly understood, might also be a source for information on 2012.

One wonders about the dearth of direct comments on 2012 in the epigraphic record of the Classic Period. I’ve realized recently that the important information, like all the best in literature, is not overtly stated but is indirectly alluded to. If the devils are in the details, the angels are in the subtext. The solstice-galaxy alignment itself serves as the key to these references, which point to the 2012 date via the sun-in-dark-rift motif. This kind of secondary reference is a common feature of any language. I may talk about “my birthday” and never mention the exact date, but if the context of my words is understood, the secondary reference implies the precise date.

Robert Sitler didn’t pursue an examination of early iconography, but he provided a good framework of approach and sincere critique of, as his subtitle put it, “The New Age Appropriation of 2012.” He confirmed and explored the complicated interactions between modern authors and Maya elders, scenarios I had experienced firsthand years earlier with Erick Gonzalez, Carlos Barrios, and Don Alejandro. My own response to Sitler’s essay addressed “Maya statements” about 2012 and called for iconography to be included as “documentation” that could be read with just as much clarity as epigraphic writing.
¹²
My intention was to emphasize, once again, Izapa and its carved monuments as important sources for understanding 2012.

As 2006 waxed to fullness, Sitler’s pointed questioning of epigraphers uncovered a very important textual date from the Classic Period site of Tortuguero, near Palenque. Like the 3114 BC Creation monuments, it was dated 13.0.0.0.0 with 4 Ahau in the tzolkin position. But the Tortuguero monument had 3 Kankin in the haab position, rather than 8 Cumku. This meant that it referred to the current era’s cycle ending, on December 21, 2012, rather than the previous 13-Baktun cycle ending, in 3114 BC. It was thus the only known specific date reference to 2012. For many years scholars had been saying that we had no references to 2012 in the archaeological record. Since 2012 is the next logical cycle ending, based on the 13-Baktun structure of the Long Count, the point is somewhat moot. My work, for example, proceeded on the assumption that the 13-Baktun cycle represented a standardized era-cycle length for the ancient Maya, and thus 2012 was implied by the plentiful Creation Texts that referenced the 13-Baktun cycle completion in 3114 BC. Michael Coe, Sylvanus Morley, and other scholars had assumed the same; it’s simply a repeating structure within a cyclic time philosophy. But now Sitler had pushed the case with scholars on the University of Texas online forum, and epigrapher David Stuart revealed that a few scholars had indeed been aware of the Tortuguero date for some time. Why the date wasn’t offered up for discussion long ago, and had to be pried out of the archives, is complicated and fraught with misunderstandings. As events unfolded, I suspect it had to do with not wanting to add fuel to New Age fires. The lapse is not that important; things happen when they will.

David Stuart offered to provide a translation of the text, and of course we all anxiously waited. Following the date phrase and reference to the end of the 13th Baktun, the inscription reads that “
something
(effaced) will occur . . . It will be the descent (?) of the Nine Support God(s) to the (?).” David summarized: “This is it. The term following
uht-oom
is the main puzzle, and largely effaced. The ‘descent’ reference is highly tentative, too. The enigmatic deity Bolon Yookte’ K’uh [the “Nine Support Gods”] has been known for some time from many sources, and I suspect that he (or they) has some tangential relationship to the Principal Bird Deity, as well as war associations. Interestingly, he is a protagonist in the deep time mythology of Palenque, as recorded on Palenque’s Temple XIV tablet. A long-lasting character who’s still around somewhere waiting, I suppose.”
¹³

In April of 2006, when the translation was released on the University of Texas online forum, a heated exchange commenced that revealed attitudes on two sides of the discussion.
¹⁴
First, within a few days Maya scholar John Hoopes pointed out that Internet sites had picked up on the translation and were hailing it as “a new discovery.” David Stuart responded, “I guess I should’ve known I was creating a monster with that initial post.” Geoff Stray responded that in all fairness it certainly did appear like a new discovery to outsiders “because the epigraphers have been keeping the information to themselves, in fear of ‘creating a monster.’ However, this secretive attitude is not the answer, because it leads to essays by academics like Bob Sitler [“The 2012 Phenomenon”] stating that there are no unambiguous 2012 references in the Classic Maya texts. The closed shop is so closed that the information has failed to reach academics in adjacent fields, such as Sitler, who has a PhD in Hispanic literature, and has only found out about the Tortuguero Monument 6 after writing his essay.”

Stuart responded by saying “I’m certain that if anyone had ever posed the question ‘Do any Maya inscriptions mention 2012?’ to us active epigraphers . . . that we would immediately say, ‘look at Tortuguero Monument 6.’ ” And yet, strangely, he felt no need to offer a correction on the assertions of his colleagues, repeated dozens of times on the e-mail lists he subscribes to, that “there are no Maya inscriptions that mention 2012.” Stuart continued: “Frankly, the Tortuguero passage, buried in lots of other data, hasn’t been a huge deal to most of us because it is damaged and very, very ambiguous . . . even if the glyphs there were clear and legible, no Mayanist I know honestly believes that the Classic Maya foresaw something that might actually come true in our day and age.”

Stuart’s last comment suggests he is conceiving of whatever 2012 means through the filter of what many New Age writers say it must mean—a dire prophecy for earth changes and/or spiritual enlightenment that “might actually come true.” The possibility that it had any meaning at all for the ancient Maya doesn’t seem to come into play. The availability of sparse references to this monument were technically public, if “the 2012 watchers” could afford to travel cross-country to attend conferences and buy expensive conference proceedings, and knew where to look for possible information that they’d been told time and again doesn’t exist.