Unprecedented Mayan Mural Found

[jimmy olsen]

The world won't end in December!
I'm going to have to change all my plans.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/120510-maya-2012-doomsday-calendar-end-of-world-science/

Erik Vance in Xultún, Guatemala

for National Geographic News

Updated 5:28 p.m. ET, May 10, 2012

In the last known largely unexcavated Maya megacity, archaeologists have uncovered the only known mural adorning an ancient Maya house, a new study says—and it's not just any mural.

In addition to a still vibrant scene of a king and his retinue, the walls are rife with calculations that helped ancient scribes track vast amounts of time. Contrary to the idea the Maya predicted the end of the world in 2012, the markings suggest dates thousands of years in the future.

Perhaps most important, the otherwise humble chamber offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Maya society. (Video: "Mysterious Maya Calendar & Mural Uncovered.")

"The paintings we have here—we've never found them anyplace else," excavation leader William Saturno told National Geographic News.

And in today's Xultún—to the untrained eye, just 6 square miles (16 square kilometers) of jungle floor—it's a wonder Saturno's team found the artwork at all.

At the Guatemalan site in 2010 the Boston University archaeologist and Ph.D. student Franco Rossi were inspecting a looters' tunnel, where an undergraduate student had noticed the faintest traces of paint on a thin stucco wall.

The pair began cleaning off 1,200-year-old mud and suddenly a little more red paint appeared.

"Suddenly Bill was like, 'Oh my God, we have a glyph!'" Rossi said.

What the team found, after a full excavation in 2011, is likely the ancient workroom of a Maya scribe, a record-keeper of Xultún.

"The reason this room's so interesting," said Rossi, as he crouched in the chamber late last year, "is that ... this was a workspace. People were seated on this bench" painting books that have long since disintegrated.

The books would have been filled with elaborate calculations intended to predict the city's fortunes. The numbers on the wall were "fixed tabulations that they can then refer to—tables more or less like those in the back of your chemistry book," he added.

"Undoubtedly this type of room exists at every Maya site in the Late Classic [period] and probably earlier, but it's our only example thus far."

Maya Twilight

Its facade long ago erased by erosion and creeping plant life, the scribe's chamber was once part of a small building just off a massive Maya plaza circled by pyramids, where kings and high priests conducted ceremonies and peddlers likely sold the clay pots whose fragments now litter the forest site.

Discovered in 1915, the sprawling city was just five miles (eight kilometers) from another Maya metropolis, San Bartolo, which became famous when Saturno uncovered stunning, 2,000-year-old Maya murals there about a decade ago.

Beyond the two cities, the Maya civilization spanned much of what are now Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico's Yucatán region. Around A.D. 900 the Classic Maya centers, including Xultún, collapsed after a series of droughts and perhaps political conflicts. (Read about the rise and fall of the Maya in National Geographic magazine.)

The apparent desperation of those final years may have played out on the walls of the newly revealed room—the only major excavation so far in Xultún.

A "Different Mindset," Etched in Ancient Stucco

Despite past looting, the interior of the newfound room is nearly perfectly preserved.

Among the artworks on the three intact walls is a detailed orange painting of a man wearing white disks on his head and chest—likely the scribe himself, said Saturno, who received funding from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration and Expeditions Council. (National Geographic News is a division of the Society.)

Holding a paintbrush, the scribe is reaching out to the blue-feather-bedecked king, whose elaborate likeness was hidden behind a curtain attached to the wall by human bone, according to the study, published this week in the journal Science.

But what was really interesting was what the team found next.

Working with epigrapher David Stuart and archaeologist and artist Heather Hurst, the researchers noticed several barely visible hieroglyphic texts, painted and etched along the east and north walls of the room.

One is a lunar table, and the other is a "ring number"—something previously known only from much later Maya books, where it was used as part of a backward calculation in establishing a base date for planetary cycles. Nearby is a sequence of numbered intervals corresponding to key calendrical and planetary cycles.

The calculations include dates some 7,000 years in the future, adding to evidence against the idea that the Maya thought the world would end in 2012—a modern myth inspired by an ancient calendar that depicts time starting over this year. (Related pictures: "2012 Doomsday Myths Debunked.")

"We keep looking for endings," expedition leader Saturno said in a statement. "The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset."

Though the idea of cyclical time is nothing new in Maya studies, team member Rossi added, the Xultún mural is by far the earliest known expression of the concept.

For example, he said while pointing to the ring number, "this is something we don't see again for over 500 years."

Now Is the Time

The Maya at Xultún were likely less concerned with the end of the world than the end of their world, according to Mayan-writing expert David Freidel of Washington University in St. Louis.

For ninth-century Maya, tabulating astronomical calendars to predict times of plenty was akin to gauging the stock market today, said Freidel, who wasn't involved in the new study.

When the Mural was made, the Xultún region was facing "a period of intense drought. In fact, cities were collapsing in various parts of the Maya world in this era," he said.

"The preoccupation of this king and his courtiers with astronomical calculation is not an arcane exercise. It has a very practical consequence for the people of the city of Xultún, which is, What the hell is going on with the economy?"

Xultún Discovery "Pretty Wild"

During tough times, the Maya looked to their leaders to divine the intents of the gods and appease them.

In turn, those rulers may have looked to the scribes, who many archaeologists believe used past events—in combination with mysterious, complex arithmetic—to predict the future.

As such, the newfound workroom could hold secrets into how the long-forgotten political system operated.

But for the scientists, the mural is also about the joy of discovery.

"To be uncovering glyphs and reading them right off the wall—to be the first one in 1,200 years to read something? I mean, it's pretty wild," Rossi said.

Sadly, we may never understand the full context of the workroom. Many of the glyphs are badly faded. Worse, the entire city of Xultún was looted clean during the 70s, leaving very little other writing or antiquities.

Because of this, and despite Xultún's obvious prominence in the Maya world, many archaeologists had written off the site.

"And yet we've still found things here that we've never seen anyplace else," excavation leader Saturno said. "And we only started looking three years ago."

[11B4V]

Fucking Mayans. Now I have to reinvest. Fuck!

[Josquius]

Bad news. If only the Mayans had predicted 2012 then we would have had a lovely new year and the nuts would have calmed down for a few months whilst they found a new ancient culture to misinterpret.
With this though they can keep predicting the Mayan end for millenia to come .

[Malthus]

Pfft, the Mayans couldn't even predict the end of their civilization, let alone ours. 

[grumbler]

Pfft, the Mayans couldn't even predict the end of their civilization, let alone ours. 

Indeed.  Of course, the Mayans didn't "predict" that the world would end at the end of the calender cycle, any more than Pope Gregory predicted that the world would end when the Gregorian calender reached the end of December 31st.

[Alexandru H.]

Pfft, the Mayans couldn't even predict the end of their civilization, let alone ours. 

Actually they pretty much did. The periods of decline and maximum growth of the Maya civilization have in common the number 19, which is the number of year a k'atun has (their most famous time unit). For example, between year 534, which is considered the high point of the first great decline of classical Maya, and 790, the height of Maya, the year that saw the construction and establishment of the most monuments, there are 13 k'atuns. Some speculate this is not just a coincidence but a fatal, conscious suicidal act in which the elites destroyed themseleves, in order to self-accomplish the prophecies. The conquest of Mexico by Cortez has the same fatal problem: the year was one of those special dates in which the current world had to die in order to give birth to another.

[Malthus]

Pfft, the Mayans couldn't even predict the end of their civilization, let alone ours. 

Actually they pretty much did. The periods of decline and maximum growth of the Maya civilization have in common the number 19, which is the number of year a k'atun has (their most famous time unit). For example, between year 534, which is considered the high point of the first great decline of classical Maya, and 790, the height of Maya, the year that saw the construction and establishment of the most monuments, there are 13 k'atuns. Some speculate this is not just a coincidence but a fatal, conscious suicidal act in which the elites destroyed themseleves, in order to self-accomplish the prophecies. The conquest of Mexico by Cortez has the same fatal problem: the year was one of those special dates in which the current world had to die in order to give birth to another.

Numerological stuff is wonderful, when you can use as "data" such exact measurements as "the year X civilization was at its height". 

[lustindarkness]

On election years even the ancient Maya flip flop on the important stuff. 

[Alexandru H.]

Pfft, the Mayans couldn't even predict the end of their civilization, let alone ours. 

Actually they pretty much did. The periods of decline and maximum growth of the Maya civilization have in common the number 19, which is the number of year a k'atun has (their most famous time unit). For example, between year 534, which is considered the high point of the first great decline of classical Maya, and 790, the height of Maya, the year that saw the construction and establishment of the most monuments, there are 13 k'atuns. Some speculate this is not just a coincidence but a fatal, conscious suicidal act in which the elites destroyed themseleves, in order to self-accomplish the prophecies. The conquest of Mexico by Cortez has the same fatal problem: the year was one of those special dates in which the current world had to die in order to give birth to another.

Numerological stuff is wonderful, when you can use as "data" such exact measurements as "the year X civilization was at its height". 

It's very easy with Maya since the end of their k'atuns were celebrated with stelae and great buildings. Pyramids were started in a special year and were inaugurated in another special year. Why is 790 special? Because we have about 19 cities that inaugurated some sort of dated monument (ball-court, twin pyramide, palace, stela). 19 years later, in 810, only 12 continue this tradition, while in 830 just 3 cities remain.

Numerology defined the whole Mayan society. Between 534 and 790 there are 13 k'atun, which for the Maya is the duration of a civilizational cycle. Between the first year of the reign of Stormy Sky (Siyaj Chan K'awiil II), the first great king of Tikal, and Jasaw Chan K'awiil I , their greatest king, there are 13 k'atuns. Now, this has nothing to do with magic, divinity or supernatural, just with sociology. There was nothing special about Jasaw Chan... but the fact that his reign began exactly 13 k'atuns after Stormy Sky offered him, and the people around him, the "belief" that this is a new beginning. So Tikal quickly embarked on a formidable construction project that transformed the city into a true spiritual capital of the Maya people.

With Cortez, something approximately similar happened. 1519 was a year in which Quetzalcoatl could have returned to Mexico (an event made possible once every 52 years). This was a society ruled by numerological fatalism.

[Faeelin]

My understanding is that the Quetazcoatl story is a bit of a myth, no?

[Admiral Yi]

I nominate this thead for Most Boring Thread Title--Lifetime.

[derspiess]

I nominate this thead for Most Boring Thread Title--Lifetime.

The mural itself turned out to be pretty boring.

[Admiral Yi]

I nominate this thead for Most Boring Thread Title--Lifetime.

The mural itself turned out to be pretty boring.

The posts are no fucking good either.

[Alexandru H.]

My understanding is that the Quetazcoatl story is a bit of a myth, no?

In the same way the Romulus story is a myth. In fact, I've read somewhere that the best reason Odoacer had to depose Romulus Augustulus was that he was named after the founder of Rome and after the first Emperor. It seemed like the perfect way to end a cycle. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Sometimes this is all you need in order to strike.

I'm no specialist in Precolumbian history but the Maya decline is one of the most interesting chapters in history. And while the usual suspects (famine, war, invasions) have a pretty strong case, I'd say we don't pay enough attention to the numerological fatality that surrounded the whole Mayan society.