Year: 2012

Bak’tuns and More Bak’tuns

David Stuart23 Comments

by David Stuart

As many know, the upcoming completion of the 13th bak’tun on December 21 is represented in the Maya Long Count as 13.0.0.0.0. It’s an important day in the Maya calendar, to be sure, but not the End of Times of course. The Maya never once said anything of the kind. Nor is the approaching day even the end of the bak’tun cycle, as it has often been described — that idea comes from an old and outdated conceptualization of Maya time. Here I’d like to explain a bit of the actual structure of the bak’tun calendar as we presently understand it, summarizing the work of a number of scholars as well as a few points I made in my 2011 book The Order of Days.

This upcoming 13.0.0.0.0 date is a repetition of the “base” of the system which fell in 3114 BCE, also represented as 13.0.0.0.0. Back then, the subsequent bak’tun number was re-set as 1 (1.0.0.0.0) and thereafter their count progressed forward until the reappearance of 13 bak’tuns on December 21 of this year. This repetition of 13s has led some to suppose that a similar re-set of the bak’tun system is upon us now, and that we are destined to go back to 1.0.0.0.0 in some 400 years from now. This is not true. Based on texts from Palenque that project calendar stations far into the future, we know there will be a linear sequence of bak’tuns from here on, represented as 14.0.0.0.0, 15.0.0.0.0, and so on. This will run forward still until 19.0.0.0.0, about 2,400 years from now.

Here’s an illustration of the sequence of bak’tuns just described:

1.0.0.0.0
2.0.0.0.0
3.0.0.0.0
4.0.0.0.0
5.0.0.0.0
6.0.0.0.0
7.0.0.0.0
8.0.0.0.0
9.0.0.0.0
10.0.0.0.0
11.0.0.0.0
12.0.0.0.0
13.0.0.0.0 August 13, 3114 BCE
1.0.0.0.0
2.0.0.0.0
3.0.0.0.0
4.0.0.0.0
5.0.0.0.0
6.0.0.0.0
7.0.0.0.0
8.0.0.0.0
9.0.0.0.0
10.0.0.0.0
11.0.0.0.0
12.0.0.0.0
13.0.0.0.0 December 21, 2012
14.0.0.0.0
15.0.0.0.0
16.0.0.0.0
17.0.0.0.0
18.0.0.0.0
19.0.0.0.0
1.0.0.0.0.0 October 13, 4772

Notice that at the end of this roughly 13,000-year span that the bak’tun changes to 0 and the next higher period, the piktun, turns over as 1. As it happens, the piktun unit before this date was set at 13, although this is left unwritten in the dates above. (Mayanists have long tended to just write five numbers of the Long Count, following the convention of the ancient Maya scribes themselves. But we know that this is a truncated representation, and that there were many more cycles above bak’tun and piktun. The full system I call the “Grand Long Count” encompassed 24 units!)

People often ask me why 13 was chosen as the re-set point for the bak’tun in 3114 BC. Why restart everything at that point? The way I see it, it’s all about two key numbers in Maya math, 13 and 20. For the Maya, both 13 and 20 were seen as key factors in a larger mathematical system, especially with regard to time. The most simple and fundamental calendar unit was a 260-day cycle (13 x 20 days), widely known as the tzolk’in, that was used for divination and had widespread use even among the general populous — one reason why it still holds importance among some Maya today and the Long Count does not. This 260-day span is about equivalent to nine months in our reckoning, the period of human gestation, and the modern Maya of highland Guatemala who still use the 260-day calendar are adamant that it’s specifically tied to the biological clock of human conception and birth. 13 thus emerges automatically as a key factor — and a sacred number — since 20 is simply the basis of the entire vigesimal (base 20) counting system found throughout Mesoamerica. Beyond this, 13 came to be widely applied to other temporal spans and cosmological structures. In fact, the interplay of the two key numbers 13 and 20 turns out to be the basis of other time structures they developed, including the Long Count.

We see this in the list of bak’tuns above, which is comprised of a sequence of 13 bak’tuns followed by 20 bak’uns — i.e., the same two key numbers of Maya time reckoning. So, the bak’tun calendar as I’ve described it shows how these two all-important numbers could relate to one another in another way, now on much bigger temporal scale.

It’s an elegant system, designed to reflect a deep cosmic structure that’s at once cyclical and lineal, as well as mythical and historical. In this way I hope we can appreciate the bak’tun we’re about to enter is a continuation of a time reckoning system that’s been in place for a long time, and that still has a long way to go.

Portraits of Yuknoom Ch’een

David Stuart1 Comment

by David Stuart

Many interesting historical and artistic details are emerging from Hieroglyphic Stairway 2 from La Corona, Guatemala, just discovered this past April by the Proyecto Arqueologico Regional La Corona. The texts and images are now in the process of study, just as the various blocks are being drawn and documented for eventual publication.

One small but important detail comes from Block VIII of the new stairway, depicting a seated ruler facing to his right, toward another lord on an adjacent block. According to the incomplete text on these stones, the scene appears to show a certain type of ballgame or ritual contest (pitz) between the local La Corona lord Sak Maas and his overlord, the famous Yuknoom Ch’een of the Kan dynasty — one of the greatest of all Maya kings. The figures are both seated on the floor and hold stone hammers, presumably used in the game as well as in their apparent capacity here as Chahk impersonators (note the headdress). Ritual gaming and associated symbols of rain-making involving similar hammer-like stones have been investigated recently by Taube and Zender (2009). This pitz event took place on 9.10.2.1.10, or 11 Feburary, 635 AD. The figure here illustrated (below, right) is almost certainly Yuknoom Ch’een himself — the first well preserved image of him from a Maya monumental sculpture. Upon realizing the likelihood of the La Corona figure as Yuknoom Ch’een’s portrait, I was interested in comparing it to his only other known image, from a carved vessel now in Schaffhausen, Switzerland (Martin and Grube 2000:108; Prager 2004) (see below, left).

Two portraits of Yuknoom Ch'een, king of the Kan dynasty. Left: the king as the day sign Ahaw, from the Schaffhausen vessel; RIght: from Block VIII or HS2 at La Corona (D Stuart photo).
Two portraits of Yuknoom Ch’een, king of the Kan dynasty. Left: the king as the day sign Ahaw, from the Schaffhausen vessel; Right: from Block VIII or HS2 at La Corona (D. Stuart photo).

The two profiles are remarkably similar, each showing a man with a small mouth and distinctively weak chin. Clearly the different artists who produced the stairway block and the vessel each made attempts to convey true portraits of this important royal person.

In addition to simply giving us a pretty good idea of what the great Yuknoom Ch’een looked like, the two images reveal that some Maya artists outside of Palenque were sensitive to the idea of portraiture, even on small ceramic media — something that isn’t always very often seen or acknowledged.

References Cited:

Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2008. Chronicle of Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya (Second Edition). Thames & Hudson, London.

Prager, Christian M.. 2004. A Classic Maya Ceramic Vessel from the Calakmul Region in the Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, Switzerland. The Human Mosaic 35(1): 31-40.

Taube, Karl, and Marc Zender. 2009. American Gladiators: Ritual Boxing in Ancient Mesoamerica. In Blood and Beauty: Organized Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica and Central America, edited by H. Orr and R. Koontz, pp. 161-220. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles.

A Podcast on 2012, from The Academic Minute

David Stuart4 Comments

CRNHS2VfinalpassageA brief take on the 2012 business, recorded for The Academic Minute, a podcast from WAMC radio distributed on a number of college and NPR stations here in the US.

http://wamc.org/post/dr-david-stuart-university-texas-austin-mayan-calendar

Of course the idea that no actual 2012 prophecy exists gets very little widespread distribution in the media. It hasn’t a chance against the shameless doom-and-gloom, junk-science narratives of The History Channel or, even worse now, The National Geographic Channel.

A Vessel from La Corona?

David Stuart5 Comments

by David Stuart

On the Kerr database of Maya vessels appears a colorful polychrome, K4020, depicting two repeating scenes of K’awiil seated upon a throne or bench (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Rollout of K4020, a cylindrical vessel possibly from La Corona, Guatemala. (Photograph by Justin Kerr)

A short dedicatory formula text appears in the two glyph panels separating the figures. This begins with the right-most column of glyphs in the photograph, reading down:

a-ALAY??-ya / T’AB-yi / yu-k’i-b’i / ti-tzi-hi

ya-AJAW-TE’ / K’INICH / K’UH(UL) / SAK-WAHY-si

Alay(??) t’ab’ay y-uk’ib’ ti tzih

yajawte’ k’inich k’uhul sak wahyis

“Here goes up (is dedicated) the cup for tzih of

Yajawte’ K’inich, the Holy Sak Wahyis”

Figure 2. The name Yajawte’ K’inich with the title Sak Wahyis, from the “Dallas Panel” from La Corona. (From drawing by D. Stuart).

The name of vessel’s owner, Yajawte’ K’inich, appears with some regularity at several sites in the central lowlands, including Naranjo, El Pajaral, Zapote Bobal, and La Corona. However, the presence of the regional title K’uhul Sakwahyis on the vessel strongly suggests that La Corona is the relevant connection — only there do we find the same combination of Yajawte’ K’inich name and title, in reference to a Late Classic ruler who reigned around 9.14.9.9.14 (Figure 2). This is the opening date of the so-called Dallas Panel from La Corona, commemorating the arrival of the wife of Yajawte’ K’inich to La Corona from Calakmul (Freidel and Guenter 2003; Martin 2008). The addition of the k’uhul “holy” modifier on the title on K4020 is the only difference, but this is probably a minor distinction, as Sak Wahyis can appear both with and without k’uhul elsewhere in La Corona’s inscriptions.

K4020’s other possible connection with La Corona comes from the repeating scenes on the vessel. In each representation K’awiil sits atop a throne decorated with a large symbolic white flower, somewhat schematic but nonetheless clear. It seems likely that these are emblematic versions of the ancient toponym we know for La Corona, Saknikte’ (“white blossom”).

REFERENCES CITED

Freidel, David, and Stanley Guenter. 2003. Bearers of War and Creation. Archaeology. http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/siteq2/index.html

Martin, Simon 2008. Wives and Daughters on the Dallas Altar. Mesoweb. http://www.mesoweb.com/articles/martin/Wives&Daughters.pdf

The 584286 Correlation

David Stuart3 Comments

Simon Martin and Joel Skidmore have recently published in The PARI Journal and posted on Mesoweb their intriguing new analysis of the age-old correlation question — that is, how we best reconcile the ancient Maya and Gregorian calendars. They offer the possibility that the standard Goodman-Martinez-Thompson (GMT) family of solutions so widely accepted by nearly all Mayanists for many decades may be off by up to a few days.

Here’s the link to their article on Mesoweb.