A Religious End-of-the-World Myth From the Mayan Civilization
A Brief History of the End of the World: Article #3
I'm an anthropologist who works on governance and development problems around the world. Using my experiences I write about how economic processes and human relationships build (or destroy) social systems and the institutions of governance.
A Religious End-of-the-World Myth From the Mayan Civilization
A Brief History of the End of the World / Article #3
3481 words. About 11 minutes
1. Introduction
In my first article of this series I wrote that there are essentially three types of end-of-the-world myths, - those that describe a never-ending inevitable cycle of destruction and renewal; those that describe the end taking place in a battle between good and evil; and a third type that is built on religious themes.
In that first article I then proceed to write about two end-of-the-world myths that are built on a philosophy depicting a cyclic nature of the end, and discussed their message for contemporary society. In the second article of the series I wrote about two other examples of end-of-the-world myths, this time ones that are built on a philosophy depicting the centrality of moral conflict, and also discussed what we can learn from them for contemporary society. Now, in this third article I write about the third category of end-of-the-world myths,- ones that are built on religion. Understandably, many of the third type overlap with the others, but not always. The world’s myths have survived because they have meaning for our contemporary world, if we bother to pay close attention to them.
2. The role of religion in end-of-the-world the myths
The spiritual beliefs and faith of religious practitioners who come together in fellowship and in confirmation of their common adherence to specific spiritual beliefs can help them navigate the uncertainties and fears associated with an anticipated end of their world. Religion-based end-of-the-world myths therefore tend to fuel exceptional levels of solidarity, hope and resolve compared to myths that are not based on religion. However at the same time, religion-based end-of-the-world myths can exclude those who are not adherent, thereby reducing community cohesion.
3. The Mayan Calendar Urban Myth
I would like to clear up a popular misconception about what is popularly known as “The Mayan Prophecy.” The “Mayan Prophecy” or Mayan Calendar Myth is an urban legend. The Mayan civilization did not predict an absolute end of the world. However it does predict the occurrence of cycles that incorporate recurring closure and renewal, conceptualized as decline and rebirth of the cosmological, terrestrial, and spiritual realms.
The Mayan Long Count Calendar is not, in itself, a myth. It is a highly precise tool used to make decisions and track historical dates. But on this tool a western urban myth was built, which has led to a wide misunderstanding in the western world about Mayan civilization.
In the Mayan civilization decisions about agriculture, religion and politics are tied not only to celestial events such as eclipses, solstices, equinoxes and the movements of the planets, but also to tell spiritual stories explaining those events and the meaning of all natural forces. The calendar was also used by Mayan astronomers and mathematicians to make precise calculations and predictions and it played an important role in the development of Mayan science and culture. In the Mayan world, planets and celestial phenomena have specific personalities and meanings. The calendar is an overarching tool (comprising, in effect, three interlocking calendars) that ties together the stories and concepts that hold this world view together. For millennia the Mayan calendar has been a central part of the Mayan religious system, as religion dominates all economic, political and social decision-making.
Traditionally the Mayans believe that certain dates in the Long Count calendar were auspicious for particular activities. Through history different levels of Mayan society (priests, politicians, warriors, farmers etc.) all had a level of understanding of these meanings and led their lives and made decisions accordingly, all guided by the calendar, which in turn was designed according to the godly celestial world. Because most of the celestial events they were able to observe were cyclical in nature, their understanding of all natural events naturally fit into a cyclical pattern that frame traditional religious beliefs.
4. Describing the Calendar
As we have seen in my previous articles on the subject, many end-of-the-world myths are actually cyclical destruction /renewal stories that tell how existence was (or is) to end and be re-created.
The Mayan Calendar counts the number of days elapsed since a specific starting point, known as the “Zero Date” (equivalent to August 11, 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar). The exact historical context of the Mayan civilization at the time when they started the Long Count Calendar is not fully known, as much of Mayan history and culture has been lost over time. However, based on archaeological and historical evidence, we can make some general observations about the Mayan civilization around the time when we believe they began using the Long Count Calendar.
At the time we believe the Long Count Calendar was developed, the Mayans were a complex and sophisticated civilization with a highly developed system of agriculture, trade, and governance. They lived in city-states throughout the Yucatan Peninsula and Central America, and they traded goods and ideas with neighboring civilizations such as the Aztecs and the Olmecs.
The calendar that the Maya used looks very different in comparison to the 12 month Gregorian Calendar that we use in the western world. The Mayan Calendar, dates back to the 5th century, consists of three dating systems, which make interpreting dates more unique than in our dating system. While the Mayan civilization contributed to the calendar’s development, it was used in pre-Columbian Central America by cultures that predated the Maya Civilization. The Mayan Calendar is conceptually best described as three concentric circles with gears allowing them to move in a mathematical relationship to each other. The smallest and innermost of these circles is surrounded by intermediate one, whose movement is in turn determined by the gears of the largest one, all turning at different but coordinated rates. Each one keeps track of a different category of events.
The development of the Long Count Calendar was likely a result of the Yucatan civilizations’ fascination with astronomy and mathematics. The Mayans were skilled observers of the natural world and they made precise calculations based on their observations of the movements of the sun, moon, stars and planets. The Long Count Calendar allowed them to make even more precise calculations and to track the passage of time over longer periods.
Overall, the Mayan civilization at the time when they began using the Long Count calendar was a complex and dynamic society deeply rooted in religious and cultural traditions. The iteration of the Mayan Long Count calendar with which we are somewhat familiar was developed during the Preclassic period of Maya civilization, which lasted from around 2000 BCE to 250 CE. It continued to be used and developed throughout the Classic period (250-900 CE) and, in many Mayan communities, even to today.
According to the Mayan creation myth, the Zero Date represents the day when the gods created the world and the first human beings. From this starting point, the Long Count calendar measures time in increments of 20 days (known as a "uinal"), 360 days (known as a "tun"), 7,200 days (known as a "katun"), and 144,000 days (known as a "baktun").
Each baktun, which is the longest unit of time in the Long Count calendar, is equivalent to 394.26 years in the Gregorian calendar. The end of the 13th baktun in the iteration of the Long Count Calendar with which we are familiar occurred on what we record in our Gregorian calendar as December 21, 2012. Being the end of a Baktun it was an important milestone in the Long Count calendar but did not represent an apocalyptic event or the end of the world, as some people mistakenly believed. The Long Count calendar is based on cycles of time, and December 21, 2012, simply marked the end of a 13th Baktun (cycle of 144,000 days). But as a full cycle of 13 baktuns the calendar stops on that date, which led to a popular western story that the calendar predicted that the world would come to an end on that date. In fact, the end of the 13th baktun in the Long Count calendar, which occurred on December 21, 2012, was an important milestone but did not represent the end of the calendar or the end of the world. Rather, it marked the completion of a cycle and the beginning of a new one, much like the way we mark the end of a century or a millennium and the start of a new one. The Mayan prophecy is simply a calendar system used by the ancient Mayans to track the passage of time and mark important celestial events.
August 11, 3114 BCE corresponds to the "Zero Date" in the Long Count calendar, was an important moment in Mayan mythology and cosmology. According to Mayan creation myths, this was the day when the gods created the world and the first human beings. According to very ancient Mayan mythology, though, Zero Date was simply the date that a previous round of 13 Baktuns came to its end and another Long Count round began.
The idea that the Mayan prophecy predicted the end of the world on December 21, 2012 is a modern misinterpretation of the Mayan Long Count calendar. Much of the knowledge and practice of using the Maya Calendar were largely lost after the decline of the Mayan civilization in the 10th century CE and their conquest by the Spanish Conquistadors in the 15th Century.
In fact, the knowledge and practice of using the calendar were largely lost after the decline of the Mayan civilization in the 10th century CE. But from studying inscriptions on buildings we now understand that the Long Count calendar itself does not end. The Mayans themselves did not predict any kind of cataclysmic or apocalyptic event, and there is no evidence that they believed the world would end in 2012. The Mayan Prophecy myth is a misinterpretation of Mayan beliefs and practices.
The largest and outermost of the three concentric circles, the Long Count, is also referred to as the “Universal Cycles”. Covering the longest period, it is 2,880,000 days long and is divided into 13 repeating segments called Baktuns, of 144,000 days each. The Mayans saw the end of Baktuns as a time of transition and renewal that are marked by important changes and transformations, but there is no mention in Mayan mythology about an apocalyptic event or end of the world. It is important to understand that the Mayan calendar is a religious platform for tracking auspicious moments in a cycle-renewal concept.
Each day (K’in) in the Long Count has a specific name except the last 5 days of the final month which were called, “ Xma Kaba Kin” or “Days without Name” and were thought to be extremely unlucky days.
The other two circles are the Tzolk’in, meaning “The Distribution of Days,” or “The Divine Calendar,” and the smallest innermost circle is called the Haab.
The Tzolk’in (middle ring) is the religious part of the Mayan calendar system and consists of 260 days. It is used to plan a variety of special events such as weddings, religious ceremonies, holidays, coronations, and for naming children. Maya religion was polytheistic, which means they believed in many gods, and the life of the Maya revolved around the life cycle of corn, from which Mayans believed human flesh was made. The middle ring, the Tzolk’in, describes a number of Mayan religious stories about spiritual renewal. Each of the Tzolk’in’s days has a specific name associated with a number from 1 to 13. The number 13 has a similar mathematical significance to the significance given by western mathematics to the number 10, on which we base our digital framework. In a sense, one can say that the Mayan “decimal system” is based on the number 13 in the same way that ours is based on the number 10.
The innermost circle, the Haab is similar to our Gregorian calendar in that it is a 365-day solar calendar. It is divided into 18 months of 20 days and one very short “leap month”.
A good example of what the Mayan Calendar time count means in today’s terms was given by Linda Schele and David Freidel in their book “A Forest of Kings”. In the example, our calendar date of January 1, 2000 corresponded to a specific day in the Mayan Haab calendar that was ruled by one of the Mayan Lords of the Night. 50 days after the beginning of the 2,282 quadrant of the 819-day count in which another one of the Mayan Gods ruled the north sky. Our date of January 1, 2000 also happened to have fallen on the 1,867,260thday since the Maya Zero Date, which is expressed in the Mayan Long Count Calendar as 12.19.6.15.0.
While the cultural and religious parts of our calendar would differ from the Mayan calendar, our celestial observations would agree. For example on our Gregorian calendar January 1, 2000 fell on the first day of January (one of a cycle of 12 months), which happened to be a Sunday (one of a cycle of seven days). It was also seven days after Christmas (one of a cycle of 365 days) and twenty-five days after the 58th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The year 2012 would see the 224th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence. Our modern celestial calendar would agree with the Mayan celestial observations, as on that day the moon was 25 days old and in its last quarter, Venus was sixty days after its maximum distance from the sun as Morningstar and 133 days after inferior conjunction, Jupiter was 69 days and Saturn 51 days after opposition to the Sun. We were eleven days past the winter solstice.
Of course, our date of January 1, 2000 had no particular importance to the ancient Maya. They had many other central and transitional days in their own cycles of time, all of which were celebrated with the same enthusiasm with which we celebrate New Year’s, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July. The Maya interpreted their own history and future potential on the important days of their calendar. In fact, this was one of the many reasons, in their view, for which a calendar even existed in the first place. For the Maya, what happens on important days is a reiteration of what happened in that day in the past and will, at some level of existence, will continue to happen on that anniversary in the future.
As a tool, the Mayan Calendar is based on a perfectly valid Mayan concept of renewal, that everything has a cycle, and that nothing lasts forever. Particularly relevant in today's society, where many people are caught up in the fast-paced world of technology and materialism, it is a reminder that even the most powerful civilizations and empires will eventually decline and fall, and that individuals should not become complacent in their daily lives. The Mayan calendar is a metaphor for the human experience, with its cycles of birth, growth, decline, and renewal.
5. How the Mayan Calendar Urban Myth was Born
When Long Count Calendar glyphs were discovered in the Yucatan that ended on December 21 2012, the urban myth was born. It was not understood at the time that even though it contained smaller, cyclical calendars, the Long Count itself was understood to be cyclical and that the thirteen baktuns that ended on December 21 2012 were themselves understood to be repeat in a new cycle of 13 more baktuns.
Between the limited western understanding of the Mayan cyclical concept of spiritual renewal, and the fact that the calendar stops on that date, and the doomsday connotation of the number 13 that prevails in parts of western tradition, a popular western “urban myth” developed that the Mayan Long Count Calendar predicted that the world would come to an end on December 21, 2012, a date that in itself has a certain symmetry in the Gregorian calendar of 122121. Because of the high precision of the Mayan calendar, a specific time (7:11am Eastern Time or 11:11 (UTC) was specified in the glyph, which also suited the appeal urban myth. True, being the end of a cycle, that day was an important milestone for the Mayan world view but in no way represented the end of the physical world as we know it. Rather, it marked the completion of a cosmo-spiritual cycle and the beginning of a new one, much like the way we mark the end of a century or millennium and the start of a new one. In fact, in the year 830 (which according to the Mayan Long Calendar was year 10.0.0.0.0) the end of a Baktun was celebrated a Uaxactún, a major Mayan city.
6. The Mayan Deluge Myth
Now that I’ve debunked the Mayan Calendar myth, we can look at a true one, the Mayan Deluge myth. This one is not a modern western urban myth. The Mayan Deluge myth refers to a catastrophic flood event that features prominently in the mythology and cosmology of the ancient Maya civilization. According to Mayan beliefs, the world has undergone several cycles of creation and destruction, and the deluge is a pivotal event in one of these cycles.
The Mayan deluge story is best known from the Popol Vuh, a mid-16th Century translation of events chiseled into stone around 300BCE at a Mayan religious site in El Mirador, Guatemala that recounts the Mayan creation myth and various legendary narratives. In the Popol Vuh, the deluge is described as a punishment unleashed by the gods upon humanity due to their arrogance and disrespect.
The deluge story unfolds with the creation of the first humans, shaped by the gods from maize dough. However, these early humans were ignorant and failed to show proper gratitude to the gods. This ingratitude led the gods to decide on a catastrophic flood to wipe out the existing civilization. Frustrated by humanity's ingratitude, the gods decided to bring about a cataclysmic flood to wipe out the existing civilization. According to the Popol Vuh, the deluge was a consequence of the gods punishing humanity for their arrogance and lack of respect.
The gods sent a torrential rainstorm that lasted for days and nights. The waters swelled, flooding the land and submerging everything in their path. The mountains and valleys disappeared beneath the rising waters, and all living creatures, including humans, were threatened with annihilation.
Nevertheless, one man and his wife were deemed deserving of survival. Named Xmucane and Xpiacoc, they were the grandparents of the gods who had created humanity. The deities instructed Xmucane and Xpiacoc to build a large boat and seek refuge inside it along with various animals.
The couple followed the divine instructions, constructing the vessel and gathering animals of all species. When the floodwaters finally receded, Xmucane and Xpiacoc emerged from the boat, along with the surviving animals, to repopulate the world.
7. Symbolic and Metaphorical Meaning of the Deluge Myth
The Mayan Deluge myth serves as a cautionary tale, emphasizing the importance of respect, humility, and reverence towards the gods. It conveys the idea that arrogance and ingratitude can lead to catastrophic consequences and the destruction of civilization.
The Mayan deluge story shares similarities with other flood narratives found in different cultures worldwide. Like the biblical story of Noah's Ark, it represents a fundamental characteristic of Mayan cosmology, namely the end of one era and the beginning of another. The Mayan deluge is a central element of Mayan mythology, symbolizing the destruction and rebirth of the world due to the gods' displeasure with humanity. It underscores the importance of humility and reverence in the face of divine power, serving as a moral lesson within the Mayan belief system.
The calendar's intricate system of cycles and dates represents the complex interplay between the physical world and the spiritual realm, emphasizing the importance of balance and harmony between the two. The Mayan calendar also emphasizes the idea of renewal and regeneration, as each cycle begins anew, and the end of one cycle marks the beginning of another.
Additionally, the calendar reflects the Mayan emphasis on the importance of the natural world and its rhythms. The Mayan calendar can also be interpreted as a symbol of human consciousness and the human experience. The cycles of the calendar are tied to specific human activities, such as birth, marriage, and death, emphasizing the idea that human life is connected to the larger cycles of the universe. The calendar also reflects the Mayan belief in the power of human agency and the idea that individuals have the ability to shape their destiny through their actions and choices.
Overall, the Mayan calendar serves as a powerful symbol of the Mayan worldview and their deep understanding of the interconnectedness of all things. It emphasizes the importance of balance and harmony, renewal and regeneration, and the interplay between the physical world and the spiritual realm.
Note to Pilgrims! If you want to make a pilgrimage to sites that are important to Mayan religious mythology I recommend visiting El Mirador (in Guatemala); Caracol (in Belize), and Palenque (in the state of Chiapas, Mexico). Don’t forget your camera!