Another day, another Baktun

In spite of the best efforts of Hollywood and shock media, December 21st came and went without catastrophe  or a bang, or even a wimper.  Nope - aside from a raft of humorous Facebook posts, it was not much more that the scheduled winter solstice exactly as predicted.  So the thirteenth long-count of the Mayan calendar comes to an end exactly 144,000 solar days (a Baktun) since the last one started, and we start counting again. This marks the end of the first Great Cycle and presumably the beginning of another. I want to believe the rest of their predictions are accurate as well, in particular the regeneration of the cosmos and the re-ordering of space and time.  It couldn't come soon enough - things have been a little chaotic lately, and not in a good way.

Really, what is wrong with people? Do we crave chaos, and drama so much that we have to twist every amazing feat of science and math into a horrific apocalyptic event?  Okay, well, I guess we know the answer to that is yes.  It is disappointing none the less to know that so much misinformation has clouded the fact that 3400 years ago, the Mayan people were able to build a calendar that accurately predicted every solar and lunar event in a repeating 5125 year time loop.  How did we miss that?  I mean as a society - how is that not the front page news?

There is a great post from NASA here with a commentary on what we should really be talking about.  The world didn't end because that was never the plan.  The calendar did not end, it just cycled, like the one on your office wall does every January 1st. The next 5125 year cycle in our history is just a few days old now and we should be celebrating the coming of the new age.  That is not fringe level crazy talk, that is science.

As we wind down the current version of our modern Gregorian calendar and turn the page on yet another one, I have to wonder how many other ancient sciences we have dismissed and forgotten because they were not convenient to our common religious or political views.  I have to wonder if there are technologies we buried a millennia ago in favor of less accurate, but more socially acceptable ones.  Maybe this Baktun we will set things right and figure it out.


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