Why mayan calendar ends

Nevertheless, scholars have taken several stabs at translations, the most prominent in by Brown University's Stephen Houston and the University of Texas at Austin's David Stuart.

Houston and Stuart's initial interpretation indicated that a god will descend at the end of Bak'tun What would happen next is uncertain, although the scholars suggested this might have been a prophecy of some sort. This analysis was picked up "on many New Age websites, associated forum discussions, and even a few book chapters" as evidence that the Maya calendar had predicted the end of the world, according to Stuart.

Houston and Stuart, however, independently revisited the glyphs recently and concluded that the inscription may actually contain no prophetic statements about at all. Rather, the mention of the end of Bak'tun 13 is likely a forward-looking statement that refers back to the main subject of the inscription, which is the dedication of Monument 6. In an October blog post about his conclusions , Stuart makes an analogy to a scribe wanting to immortalize the New York Yankees' sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies in that year's World Series.

If this writer were to use the Maya rhetorical device thought to be in Monument 6's inscription, the text might read:. It happened 29 years after the first Yankees victory in the World Series in And so 50 years before the year will occur, the Yankees won the World Series. Written this way, Stuart notes, the text mentions a future time of historical importance—the year anniversary of the victory—but it does so in reference to the event at hand, i.

According to INAH's Gallaga, this structure of Maya texts is what has confused modern minds, given our penchant for literal, straightforward reading. Even if the Monument 6 inscription refers to a god coming down at the end of Bak'tun 13, it isn't a statement about the end of the world, he said. Read about the rise and fall of the Maya in National Geographic magazine. Saturno, the Boston University archaeologist, agreed that the reference to a specific date is clear in Monument 6, but added that "there's no text that follows and says, Herein will be the end of the world, and the world will end in fire.

That's not anywhere in the text. Related video: Surviving —Preparation. Rather, Saturno said, the hype around stems from dissatisfied Westerners looking to the ancients for guidance, hoping that peoples such as the Maya knew something then that could help us through difficult times now.

In any case, even if the ancient inscriptions explicitly predicted the end of the world, Saturno wouldn't be worried, given the Maya track record with long-range prophecy. All rights reserved. That's just us. Maya Prophecy for End of the World? If this writer were to use the Maya rhetorical device thought to be in Monument 6's inscription, the text might read: "On October 7, , the New York Yankees defeated the Philadelphia Phillies to win the World Series. They didn't see the Spanish conquest coming.

So they did not have to worry about a 'year' being an inexact number of days. We do this now by adding a day every four years. But there are standard tables that cover all this which Mayanists use. Nowadays though, we can just go online and use a computer programme.

Some of the Maya cycles were similar to ours, with one lasting days, so similar to our calendar year. Because of this, Graham said some people make the mistake of talking about years in the Maya calendar: "But they did not have a named cycle for 'year' that is equivalent to our So figuring out equivalents by assuming the Maya calculated 'years' isn't going to work.

She said it is unclear why doomsday stories get associated with the Maya calendar. But Biblical tales get associated with doomsday events, too. Susan Gillespie, a Professor at the University of Florida's Department of Anthropology, also told Newsweek there was "no correction needed" to the Maya calendar.

This catastrophe was initially predicted for May , but when nothing happened, the doomsday date was moved forward to December The coronavirus outbreak across the world has already turned half of into a disaster, and the latest conspiracy theories of the Mayan calendar's 'doomsday' have just worsen the problems.

There are conspiracy theorists who claim that the world will end today, ie, June 21, as per the Mayan calendar. The Mayan calendar came into existence in and people used different calendars to keep a track of dates before this.

At the time, the two of the most popular calendars were the Mayan and Julian calendars. Although, the majority of people around the globe presently follow the Gregorian calendar. As per experts, the Gregorian calendar was introduced to better reflect the time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun.

However, a lot of people believe that as many as 11 days were lost from the year that was once determined by the Julian calendar.