Maya 'doomsday' may actually be Sunday, archaeologist says

TULUM, Mexico – Hold on to your
doomsday fever, folks, the Maya
calendar date celebrated Friday as
the “end of the world” might
actually be off by two days – or a
full year.
The end of the 13th baktun cycle
of the so-called Long Count of the
ancient Maya’s intricate,
interlocking calendar system might

correspond to Sunday, not Friday,
said Carmen Rojas, an archaeologist
with Mexico’s National Institute of
Anthropology and History.
As “end of the world” hype swept
the globe Friday, scholars pointed
out that the Maya calendar hasn't
been decoded enough to make
exact correlations with the
Gregorian calendar that we use.
Rojas stressed that the Maya not
only calculated baktun cycles of
144,000 days, but also had systems
that measured the marches of
Venus and the moon. Other
scholars note some Maya glyphs
mark dates thousands of years
further into the future.
In addition, calendar dates that
Maya leaders recorded on pillars
that survive to this day might have
been modified over time to suit
certain cultural or political
interests of the day, Rojas said
during a walk-through Thursday of
the ruins of Tulum, a pre-Hispanic
port city situated on a spectacular
bluff overlooking coral reefs in the
Caribbean Sea .
One such inconsistency leads some
Maya scholars to believe the 13th
baktun cycle ends on Sunday, while
others say it might be off by a full
year or more.
Dec. 21 "is not a relevant date for
us. It is an accident that someone
would take and pull it out,” said
Rojas, a specialist in the
archaeology of cenotes, a type of
sinkhole. “If you look at a book of
Maya epigraphy, there are so many
dates that could be
commemorated. The glyphs are
also not so easily interpreted. It
depends on the correlation that
you use.”
Nonetheless, in recent days,
tourists from around the world
have flocked to the so-called Maya
Riviera on the Caribbean coast of
Mexico’s Quintana Roo state,
leading to higher-than-normal
occupancy at hotels and on flights
arriving at Cancun’s international
airport, local reports said. Many
visitors say they are using the
supposed end of the 13th baktun
as an opportunity for spiritual
reflection and cleansing.
In Guatemala, people are gathering
at the Maya site of Tikal for
ceremonies marking the end of the
baktun cycle and the winter
solstice, which does correspond to
sunset on Friday. Separately,
highland Maya tied to the
indigenous rebel army known as
EZLN in Mexico’s state of Chiapas
have mobilized and occupied at
least five towns, reports said.
As tourists arriving on packed
buses swarmed the Tulum site on
Thursday, one visitor said she came
to the region to get married at a
nearby resort -- just in case.
"The end of a cycle is the end of a
cycle, there are obviously
translation issues," said Rhonda
Church, a visitor to Tulum from
San Marcos, Texas. "I find it
interesting."