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#61
Whew - in that case I'll try and relax.
I don't think anyone really knows what year it is anyway. The current year ranges from the Bahá'í calendar year of 167 to the Byzantine calendar year of 7520. It's only by International agreement on the Gregorian calendar that we are now in 2011. And that didn't even exist until 1582. That calendar took almost 200 years to adopt around the World. There were so many adjustments to the days over the years that for all we know, the Maya equivalent of 12/21/2012 could have passed last February. Or even 500 years ago.
I seriously doubt that the Mayans expressed dates in the fashion that we do. I would imagine that someone converted it to work with the current calendar.
Perhaps I misunderstood, but it sounded as though you were discounting the credibility of the date 12/21/2011 as being the actual date corresponding to the Mayan calendar. What I was saying is that it probably is correct.
I agree. I'm not arguing with you. It may be correct. Just as it may not be because scientist are using the current standard of time and looking back. Before the 16th century, there was no agreement even on how many days were in a year or how many months for that matter. There really wasn't even "months" on the Maya calendar. Their symbols for time dealt with seasons--Hours and days didn't exist except by perception. I'm just saying that the measure of time over the last 3,000+ years has not been constant. Before that, there was daylight and dark. The only way we've been able to correlate periods is because someone scratched star arrangements on a rock. Time is a very "modern" conception in the history of Earth.
The Mayans expressed time in cycles. Not BC and AC.
To them, time was just a repeating cycle of events. And history repeated itself over and over.
Cycles were days, seasons, eclipse cycles etc.
Their calendars were quite complex and tracked many things. Even the 9 month cycle of preganacy.
Its quite interesting how it worked. Wheels within wheels ... counting down, everything.
Dec. 2012 date is a rough estimate on the part of science.
They basically figured out what the cycles were, how they work, and how long it takes.
So to figure out when the event at the end of the Long count happens, they have to figure out what the actual start date of the Mayan calander is.
Which, is a bit wierd.
Because if we they off on the start date, that throws the entire Mayan calandar off.