Unprecedented Maya Mural Found, Contradicts 2012 "Doomsday" Myth

[YankeyMCC]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/120510-maya-2012-doomsday-calendar-end-of-world-science?source=link_fb05102012saturnomuralmaya

This part right here is exactly what grabs me about these kinds of finds:

(snip)

"The reason this room's so interesting," said Rossi, as he crouched in the chamber late last year, "is that ... this was a workspace. People were seated on this bench" painting books that have long since disintegrated.

The books would have been filled with elaborate calculations intended to predict the city's fortunes. The numbers on the wall were "fixed tabulations that they can then refer to—tables more or less like those in the back of your chemistry book," he added.

(snip)

[leveymg]

1. OMG - Mayan Apocalypse revisionism. Is nothing sacred?

[KansDem]

2. Does this mean I can go ahead and plan my 2013 vacation?

[pscot]

4. Wouldn't be prudent.

The old gods hate complacency.

[provis99]

3. dammit!

Now what am I going to do with all my freeze-dried food and bottled water?

[Warpy]

6. Trade it for more duct tape

You can always find a use for more duct tape. If you're in a quandary and think you're oversupplied, visit Mythbusters on the web. They've made cars, boats and planes out of the stuff. Thinking smaller, there are people on Etsy and Artfire selling wallets and other small items made from it.

However, do expect the stock market to take a dive in late November as the easily frightened and terminally gullible cash out for one last party before they are DOOMED.

The rest of us will be hanging back, secure in the knowledge that the prefix on the date is changing and nothing more, and ready to snap up a few bargains.

[kickysnana]

5. Same people who found the "Made on Mars" rocks at the pole when NASA was seeking funding?

[Judi Lynn]

7. Maya lunar calendar notes discovered in Guatemala

Maya lunar calendar notes discovered in Guatemala
Deborah Zabarenko
Reuters
3:47 p.m. EDT, May 10, 2012

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - On the wall of a tiny structure buried under forest debris in Guatemala, archaeologists have discovered a scribe's notes about the Maya lunar calendar, which they say could be the first known records by an official chronicler of this ancient civilization.

These notes pertain to the same Maya calendar that is sometimes erroneously thought to predict the world's end on or about December 22, 2012. The researchers who helped uncover and decipher the wall's inscriptions said the Maya calendar foresaw a vast progression of time, with the December 2012 date the beginning of a new calendar cycle called a baktun.

"They were looking at the way these cycles were turning," said William Saturno of Boston University, an author of an article on the find in the journal Science. "The Maya calendar is going to keep going and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future, a huge number that we can't even wrap our heads around."

The faint numerical inscriptions on the wall in Guatemala measure out time in approximate six-month increments, based on six lunar cycles, with small stylized pictures of Maya gods to indicate which deity was the patron of a specific slice of time, the researchers said Thursday in an online briefing.

More:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_COCAINE_VIRGINIA_HONDURAS?SECTION=HOME&SITE=AP&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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Photos with story at this link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/10/maya-painting-xultun-glyph-mayan-calandar_n_1506830.html

[center]~ ~ ~ ~ ~ [/center]
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered
MALCOLM RITTER
AP Science Writer

NEW YORK -- Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago.

The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later.

Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012.

"Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on."

More:
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/10/3604798/ancient-mayan-workshop-for-astronomers.html#storylink=cpy

[L. Coyote]

8. You can always count on National Geographic to spin some racist crap out of everything

"elaborate calculations intended to predict the city's fortunes..."

Primitive soothsayers :ropf: instead of astute scientists 1,200 years ago.

No way can there possibly have been an intellectually advanced society somewhere on the globe before colonizing white men burned their books then later on had their "Enlightenment" moment!

[laconicsax]

9. IIRC, there are only 3 remaining Mayan books because conquistadors destroyed the rest.

Not because they've "long since disintegrated."