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>>History repeating itself? What happened at the BEGINNING of the mayan long-count calendar?<<
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There are so many theories about what will happen in 2012 that it is getting quite confusing... But did any of you ever wonder what happened at the beginning of the long-count calendar 3114 BC?
If there was a great change in climate causing perhaps snowstorms, great floods or droughts in the tropics where the Mayans/Olmecs lived would it be reasonable to conclude that this could have been a marker for the beginning of their calendar? [edit: on page 4 I clarify that the calendar and astronomical knowledge the Mayans had was inherited from an older civilization]
It turns out that there was such an event about 5,200 years ago. Almost an exact match with the beginning of the long-count calendar. But this change was not just a regional phenomenon, but rather a global one and caused tremendous changes in climate abruptly.
Surely it did not mean that their world was destroyed. But why did they end their calendar in 2012? Were they aware of some sort of cycle? Could this event repeat itself?
The answer can be found in precession:
"On a much vaster scale, the Long Count measures the precession of the equinoxes, a cycle of approximately 25,695 years. One fifth of the average precessional cycle is 5,139 years, very close to the 5,125-year Long Count (which when added up equals to 25,625 years). In Mesoamerican myth, there are five great ages, each one ending with a collapse of some sort. According to some Mesoamerican myths, we are living today in the last years of the fifth and last age, the closure of a cycle of five segments of the precession cycle. Given the simple technology available to them, the ancient Mesoamerican astrologer/astronomers did some amazing work. Not only did they estimate the length of the precession cycle, but they also anchored it with a remarkable alignment, the meeting of the winter solstice with the plane of the Milky Way, the equator-like plane that runs through the center of our galaxy."
[on page 4 I further elaborate on this point]
[link to www.onereed.com]
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson worries that he may have found clues that show history repeating itself, and if he is right, the result could have important implications to modern society.
Thompson has spent his career trekking to the far corners of the world to find remote ice fields and then bring back cores drilled from their centers. Within those cores are the records of ancient climate from across the globe.
[link to researchnews.osu.edu]
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The latest expeditions to ice caps in the high, tropical Peruvian Andes Mountains by Ohio State University scientists may shed light on a mysterious global climate change they believe occurred more than 5,000 years ago.
[link to researchnews.osu.edu]
Lonnie checked the scientific literature and began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. He learned about several climate-related events that occurred about 5,200 years ago, suggesting a cooling period in the earth's history.
This was about the same time that advancing glaciers in the Alps region of Europe preserved the "Tyrolean Iceman" (or Otzi) who was discovered in 1991. Like Lonnie's moss plant, Otzi was covered quickly by deep snow and remained frozen from that time until he was exposed by the retreat of a glacier. The Iceman's remains have been radiocarbon dated to around 5,200 years ago.
Other natural recorders of past climate showing the same cool and wet period include: ice cores from Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, cave formations (stalactites and stalagmites) from Soreq Cave in southern Israel, and tree rings in both Ireland and England.
From a sociological point of view, this abrupt cooling event occurred just as hierarchical societies were forming in the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia. Some of the inner desert regions of Arabia were also abandoned at about the same time. Scientists believe that these shifts in social organization may have been, in part, an effort to adapt to more variable climate conditions, including cooler temperatures and changing water supplies.
[link to beyondpenguins.nsdl.org]
Could these changes also be responsible for a great migration from Taiwan 5,200 years ago? Perhaps people had to get innovative in order to survive, building ships that enabled them to escape the now uninhabitable lands.
[link to www.stonepages.com]
"Using these new technologies the Austronesians and Polynesians were able to rapidly spread through the Pacific in one of the greatest human migrations ever. This suggests that technological advances have played a major role in the spread of people throughout the world."
I find the evidence quite compelling that some global climate shift happened 5,200 years ago. Moreover, the fact that the long-count measures precession and is only of by about 14 years is extraordinary. However, the measurements are not completely accurate, making time a variable. Therefore the calendar "end date" could be off by some decades...
The question remains if the Mayans [or an earlier civilization] adapted their calendar to it and if they predicted a similar event in 2012 (+- some decades).
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