Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (33 page)

The calendars of pre-Columbian
America, including those of the Maya
and the Aztecs, shared many basic
characteristics, such as a 260-day
ritual year. The Mayan calendar, the
center of their life and culture, was
based not only on the sun and moon,
but also the cycles of the planet Venus
and the constellation of the Pleiades.
In fact, what we know as the Mayan
calendar is a series of three different
calendar systems used in parallel, the
most ancient and most important of
which was the Tzolkin (sacred calendar). There was also the Haab (a solar
agrarian/civil calendar) and the Long
Count system. The Tzolkin, or Sacred
Year, was a religious calendar used to
name children, predict the future, and
decide on favorable dates for such
things as battles and marriages. The
Tzolkin consisted of a 260-day short
year (13 months of 20 days), each day
of the month having a name, similar
to our days of the week, and its own
symbol. The Maya day names were
Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan, Chicchan, Cimi,
Manik, Lamat, Muluc, Oc, Chuen, Eb,
Ben, Ix, Men, Cib, Caban, Eiznab,
Cauac, and Ahau. Each of these names
was symbolized by a god who carries
time across the sky, thus indicating
the journey of night and day. This
Tzolkin short year system seems to
have been taken over by the Mayans
from the Zapotec civilization, a native
culture of south central Mexico dating
back to at least 1500 B.C., and who began to record information in this form
around 600 B.C. The Tzolkin is based
on the cycles of the Pleiades star clus

ter, a significant constellation for the
Maya, who used pyramids and observatories to track their movement. Indeed, the pyramid and temple
complex of Teotihuacan, near Mexico
City, is oriented to the position where
the Pleiades set along the horizon. The
Maya later combined the Tzolkin with
a lunar calendar known as the Tun-Uc,
which used 28 day cycles that reflect
the women's moon cycle.

The Haab or Vague Year (called
vague because it was a quarter of a day
short of the solar year), was a solar
calendar in some ways similar to our
own, and was connected primarily with
agriculture and the seasons. During the
Classic Maya period, the days of the
Haab were numbered from zero to 19,
and the first day of the year related to
zero. In fact, the Maya invented the
concept of the number zero. Their
counting system was based on the number 20, instead of the number 10 as
with our own, so they counted from
zero to 19, rather than zero to 10, before moving to the next order. The Haab
calendar consisted of 18 months of 20
days, followed by a further "unlucky"
five day month called Uayeb, making a
total of 365 days to match up with the
solar year. The Tzolkin and the Haab
calendars were combined to form a coordinated 52-year cycle known as the
Calendar Round. At the beginning of
these Calendar Rounds, there were
ritual celebrations that included the
extinguishing of old fires and the lighting of new, and the consecration of new
temples.

The Long Count calendar, allegedly
more accurate than the Julian calendar
of 16th century Europe, seems to have
been created around the first century
B.C., and was used to record dates over long periods of time. In essence, the
Long Count totals the number of days
since August 3114 B.C., a date when the
Mayan Fourth Creation or present
Great Cycle was supposed to have begun. This was in effect the Mayan year
zero, akin to our date of January 1, A.D.
1. So 3114 B.C., the start date of this
time cycle, is written 0-0-0-0-0, and 13
cycles of 394 years will have passed by
the time the next cycle begins, which
is in year A.D. 2012 (13-0-0-0-0). The
Long Count basically consisted of a tun
of 360 days, 20 tuns constituting a
katun (7,200 days), 20 katuns forming
a baktun (144,000 days), and 13 baktuns
making a Great Cycle (1,872,000 days,
or around 5,130 years). At the conclusion of this Great Cycle, the Maya believed that the world as we know it
will cease to exist.

The incredible complexity of the
Mayan calendrical systems can perhaps be explained in part by a need
for power and influence. Decisions
about dates for sacred events and the
agricultural cycle were in the hands
of Mayan priests, who decided by consulting the calendars when the time
was right to perform certain tasks.
Their abilities to decipher meaning
from the calendars in terms of (for example) when to sow and reap, or which
were favorable days for marriage or
war, meant that they were able to exercise an immense amount of control
over the population. As the average
citizen was not required to comprehend this complex calendar, the
priests basically had a free reign to
make the system as intricate as it
suited them.

The winter solstice of A.D. 2012 in
the Mayan Long Count signifies the

end of the 13th baktun cycle that began in 3114 B.C. The conclusion of the
Mayan calendar on this date has
alarmed many people, who believe
that this signifies the violent destruction of the world. But did the Maya
actually predict such a cataclysm with
their calendar? One of the most important beliefs of the Maya was the idea
of a cyclical universe, where the Earth
goes through recurring creations and
destructions. In the Popol Vuh (Book
of Council), the sacred book of the
Maya, probably written in the late 16th
century A.D. but dating back much earlier, descriptions of successive creations and destructive floods are
prominent. There are also descriptions
of the 3114 B.C. creation on various
Mayan monuments, such as the monolith known as Stela C at the city of
Quirigua, Guatemala. Such texts describe creation, including the organization of the gods, for example, and not
destruction, and also relate mythical
events much further back in time than
3114 B.C. The Mayan Calendar also determines dates far into the future, such
as a royal anniversary which will occur in October of A.D. 4772. This is
hardly something they would have
done if the world was supposed to have
already ended by then. What the
Mayan calendar indicates for the winter solstice of 2012 should be interpreted as the conclusion of an old and
the beginning of a new cycle, rather
than the end of the world. The ancient
Mayan calendar cycle still survives today in southern Mexico and the Guatemalan highlands, where it is looked
after by calendar priests, or day keepers, who still maintain the 260-day
sacred count for divination and other
ritual activities.

© Rien van de Weygaert, Kapteyn Institute, Groningen, the Netherlands.
http: / /www.astro.rug.nl/-weygaert/antikytheramechanism.html.

The Antikytheran Mechanism is on display in the National Archaeological Museum of
Athens. Detail showing central gearhouse.

On Easter of 1900, Elias Stadiatos
and a party of Greek sponge fishermen
were fishing off the coast of the tiny,
rocky island of Antikythera, between
the southern Greek mainland and
Crete. Surfacing after one of his descents, Stadiatos began babbling about
a "heap of dead naked women" on the
sea bed. Further investigation by the
fishermen revealed the 164 foot long
wreck of a sunken Roman cargo ship,
about 140 feet down. The buried objects
from the ship included first century B.C.

marble and bronze statues (the dead,
naked women), coins, gold jewelry,
pottery, and what appeared to be
lumps of corroded bronze, which broke
into pieces shortly after being brought
to the surface.

The finds from the wreck were subsequently examined, recorded, and
sent off to the National Museum in
Athens for display or storage. On May
17, 1902, Greek archaeologist Spyridon
Stais was looking through the odd
lumps from the shipwreck, covered in marine growth from 2,000 years beneath the sea, when he noticed that
one piece had a gear wheel embedded
in it and what looked like an inscription in Greek. There had been a
wooden case associated with the object but this, as well as the wooden
planks from the ship itself, had subsequently dried out and crumbled. Further examination and meticulous
cleaning of the corroded broonze
lumps revealed additional pieces belonging to the mysterious object, and
soon an elaborate geared mechanism
made of bronze, and measuring about
33 by 17 by 9 centimeters, was revealed. Stais believed the mechanism
to be an ancient astronomical clock,
but the prevailing opinion at the time
was that the strange object was too
intricate to belong to a wreck dated
by the pottery on board to the early
first century B.C. Many researchers
thought that the mechanism was the
remains of a medieval astrolabe, an astronomical device for observing planetary movements, and used for
navigation. (The earliest known example of which is from the ninth century A.D. in Iraq.) But no general
agreement on the date or purpose of
the artifact was reached, and the
enigma was soon forgotten.

In 1951, Derek De Solla Price, an
English physicist, and at the time professor of the history of science at Yale
University, became fascinated by the
complexity of the shipwreck mechanism, and began what was to be eight
years of detailed study using x-ray
photography. In June 1959, the conclusions of his analyses were published
as an article in Scientific American
entitled "An Ancient Greek Computer." X rays of the mechanism

revealed at least 20 separate gears,
including a differential gear, previously thought to have been invented
in the 16th century. The differential
gear allowed the rotation of two shafts
at different speeds, as used on the rear
axle of automobiles. Price deduced
from his research that the Antikythera
find represented the remains of a
"great astronomical clock," which had
close ties to "a modern analogue computer." These conclusions met with
some unfavorable reactions from scholars. A certain professor refused to believe in the possibility of such a device,
and hypothesized that the object must
have been dropped into the sea in medieval times and somehow made its
way into the wreck.

In 1974, Price published the results of more complete research based
on further X rays and gamma radiographs by Greek radiographer
Christos Karakalos, as a monograph
entitled Gears from the Greeks. The
Antikythera mechanism, a calendar
computer from ca. 80 B.C. Price's further study showed that the ancient
scientific instrument actually contained at least 30 gears, although most
of them were incomplete. However,
enough of the gearing remained for
Price to work out that when its handle
was rotated, the mechanism was
meant to show the motion of the moon,
sun, probably the planets, and the rising of the major stars. The device was
in effect a complicated astronomical
computer, a working model of the solar system, which had once been contained inside a wooden box with hinged
doors to protect the mechanism inside.
From the inscriptions and the position
of the gears (and year-ring on the object), Price concluded that it had a close connection with Geminus of
Rhodes, a Greek astronomer and mathematician who lived from approximately 110 to 40 B.C. Price believed the
Antikythera Mechanism to have been
built and designed on Rhodes, a Greek
island off the coast of Turkey, probably
by Geminus himself around 87 B.C. Indeed, the shipwreck had contained
storage jars from the island of Rhodes
in its cargo, and was thought to have
been journeying from Rhodes to Rome
when it sank. The date of the vessel's
sinking has been fairly securely tied
to somewhere around 80 B.C., so presuming that the object was already a
few years old when it was lost, a date
for the construction of the Antikythera
Mechanism of around 87 B.C. is now
generally accepted.

It is conceivable then-in terms of
date-that the device could have been
made by Geminus on the island of
Rhodes, especially as Rhodes is known
to have been a center of astronomical
and technological research in this era.
The second century B.C. Greek writer
on mechanics, Philo of Byzantium, describes the polybolos, which he witnessed on Rhodes. This amazing
catapult had the capacity to fire repeatedly without the need to reload,
and possessed two gears linked by a
chain drive powered by a windlass (a
lifting device consisting of a horizontal cylinder rotated by a crank). Rhodes
was also the place where the Greek
Stoic philospher, astronomer, and geographer Poseidonius (c. 135 B.c.-51
B.C.) established the nature of the tides.
In addition, Poseidonius made a fairly
accurate (for the time) measurement
of the size of the sun, and also calculated the size and distance of the moon.
The astronomer Hipparchus of Rhodes