why were they obsessed with the movement
of planets and stars and the moon and
the Sun because those were the cycles
that the Maya tied their existence to
their hope was to be able to use their
knowledge of the past to guide the
future that’s what the Maya calendar
means coming out this evening and I’m
pretty sure that there aren’t many
people this year who haven’t heard about
the ancient Maya who haven’t heard about
their calendar and haven’t heard that
they predicted the end of the world in
just a few weeks time so if you’ve come
out tonight and this is weighing heavily
upon your minds fret not I intend to
send you home reassured now all too
often when we think of lost
civilizations like the Maya we think of
them as very different from us distant
foreign even alien but tonight I hope to
reintroduce you to the Maya to bring you
into their lives through their history
to share with you their passions through
their art in essence I would like to
take you on a journey sort of back in
time together and as is the hope with
any travel to a little-known place when
we arrive back home our hope is that we
better understand the place we visited
and we also understand ourselves and
where we’ve come from a little bit
better as well now this is Ian Graham
and this was just in on a normal day you
know Ian
probably one of the most fascinating
people ever to be born took up the call
he sort of followed in the footsteps of
people like morally and Maudsley
documenting these ruins in these
monuments in the forests of Guatemala
and Mexico and he became prominent in
the 1970s because when he was out there
doing it he was battling looters he was
dodging bullets he was doing all of the
things that those sort of fictional
archaeologists do in movies that’s what
Ian had to do in real life and we even
have the photograph of him with his whip
so we’re just saying Ian Graham the real
Indiana Jones well Ian began a project
called the corpus of Maya hieroglyphic
inscriptions and Ian actually received a
MacArthur Genius award for his
contributions to the decipherment of
Maya hieroglyphs not because Ian himself
could read Maya hieroglyphs or decipher
them at all but because his life has
been dedicated to simply recording these
monuments before they vanished into the
hands of private collections and looters
around the world that by documenting
them before they were lost
he actually provided the corpus of
material that a pig refers would use to
decipher Maya hieroglyphs and it’s only
because of that work that today we can
read about 90% of what we find of what
the Maya wrote now I should say that
when I began studying the Maya we were
really just beginning to unravel that
history I should also say that I wanted
to be Ian Graham I eventually did get
the chance to work for Ian Graham I was
simply going out to verify the presence
of a couple of monuments that Ian had
found decades earlier and had reburied
so that looters wouldn’t find them my
job was simply to go out
and refined them to go where he had
already been to find what he had already
found I wasn’t very good at it I began
at Ian’s house the first thing I was
told by the guide he told me to hire was
that we can’t get there it’s just too
far away there is however a place it’s
very close we’d simply travel up through
Tikal and through wash achtung and from
Washington it’s really just about a
three-hour trip there are these
hieroglyphic monuments three of them in
fact that have recently been uncovered
by looting and we will go and find them
document that you take pictures we’ll be
back later today this is the road to
shell tomb that we took it’s in fact a
very nice part of the road it’s the part
where the road opens up and I think hey
I think and get a picture here we of
course happens not long after that
picture upon a tree fallen in the forest
I’m pretty sure it made a sound now this
is I love this picture I love this
picture because this is the crew that we
have it was myself few other individuals
we had two machetes and a chain a
chainsaw
probably would have been more useful in
this case but a chain is what we had and
we thought you know we’ll do we’ll just
use the vehicle and we’ll haul this tree
well unfortunately also weren’t driving
a semi trailer or a bulldozer so we were
unable to move that tree but I mean
really what are the chances we’d find
another one and when we just cut a path
around the tree we drove around it
should be fine how many trees do you
think we found ok well more than 118 is
actually the winner 18 is the winning
number 18 trees 12 and a half hours we
eventually arrived at Schulten we spend
the night there
the next day we continued walking on our
way we eventually find the site of San
Bartolo we eventually find an
archeological site I head out of the Sun
into a looters excavation
and get to see this it’s incredible to
look at the artistry of it the last time
a wall painting had been found in the
Maya area was in 1946 it had been 55
years
I certainly had not found any of the
things that Ian had sent me out to find
but I had gotten very lucky and the
perseverance of continuing to walk was
rewarded by finding this and I got very
lucky and that I didn’t have to go home
empty-handed and that I didn’t die also
a bonus these are the paintings at some
Bartolo the story itself is remarkable
the quality of the painting is stunning
the story tells us of a patron deity of
Kings that sets up the world that makes
a sacrifice of his own blood and of a
series of animals at for trees
representing the four corners of the
world and he does that in order to set
up the world that Kings will one day
rule where Kings will sit upon
scaffolding and will receive their
headdresses from attendants climbing
ladders these are the divine foundations
of kingship and the ceremonies
associated with the coronation of Kings
that would exist in the Maya lowlands
for the next thousand years and they are
painted on the walls at San Bartolo in
the first century BC now this one comes
from a student of mine actually max
Chamberlain who the very day I finished
the 10 years of work to consolidate and
protect the Sun Bartolo murals the day
the last stone of that consolidation
work went into place this is the mural
that max found now you’re looking at
this going ok you may be thinking the
same thing I was thinking nice mural max
like I’m no mural snob but okay fine I’m
a mural snob I mean it’s very impressive
but I think I see a line there
well done well done you this is not
something I’ll have to worry about I’m
glad that you found it he found it
decided to take what he called the
Saturno method I’ll just poke my head
around looters excavations until I find
a mural like that is never gonna work
again he’s like it did he worked fine
now it’s interesting as I said well max
you know it’s disappointing there’s not
much we can see but certainly I’m
surprised that there’s anything here at
all this in fact wasn’t a temple this is
the house this actually wasn’t even a
terribly impressive house the building
themselves are just it’s a small mound
it’s a few meters tall you can see that
it’s right below the surface well first
of all paintings shouldn’t be preserved
here something Tamiya didn’t paint
murals they probably painted them all
over the places that they don’t preserve
in the Maya loewen’s those changes in
temperature and humidity are horrible
for plaster and paint they destroy them
and that little bit that was exposed by
looters we don’t know how long it was
exposed but we know that at this point
there was more mural there than I had
imagined I said to max well I’m gonna
excavate just a little bit we’ll just
see how big the room was certainly
there’s not gonna be anything there but
at least we can say that used to be this
big you know there’s no painting now but
there used to be something so we
excavated I excavated just a little bit
and that’s the back wall of the room
that you see through the looters tunnel
was only about 20 centimeters from where
the looters had stopped I excavated it I
thought holy cow max by Joe you’ve done
it awesome there’s another mural I
thought I was out they keep dragging me
back in so
but this mural so different than San
Bartolo one of the walls the paint is
almost invisible it’s very close to the
surface it’s the exterior wall it’s on
the east side it’s the wall that would
have received the most light through the
doorway when the
was in use but on that wall which you’re
looking at her saying I’m not seeing a
lot we can still see some we see an
individual who’s face painted black it’s
I staring upwards but more importantly
on this wall is that there are these
areas that are covered in Maya texts
some of them minuscule some of them
longer but none of them containing the
type of historical information that we
might find on a steel ax that we might
expect to find on a classic period mural
in fact the text that we see on this
wall is really unlike any text that
we’ve ever seen in the classic period so
I say to max well not only did you find
a painting you found something
unlike anything else we’ve ever seen one
of those paintings is this it’s fairly
simple the series of columns of Mayan
numbers each one of those columns is
capped by a glyph of the moon and in
fact the patron of the moon that applies
to that particular six-month lunar
period this is a mile lunar table it’s a
series of days added upon days in order
to precisely predict the moon’s path
through this guy to precisely predict
its period now I say that because it
predicts the period of the moon so that
it’s off by about 20 seconds each year
over a period of 13 years this is simply
the type of table that you would see in
a Maya codex this is the reconstructed
table it’s really quite impressive
it’s simply adding lunar months lunar
semesters 177 days at a time but like
our leap year every once in a while
every six periods it adds an extra day
as a correction in order to keep the
mathematics of easily calculating the
moon’s period in line with the actual
observations of the moon why did the
Maya do this why were they obsessed
with the movement of planets and stars
and the moon and the Sun because those
were the cycles of their lives
those were the cycles that they tied
their existence to that they tied the
events of their daily lives and the
events and the royal lives of kings on
the back wall of this room even better
preserved and more impressive we see the
portrait of the king we see the King
attended by an individual who is titled
as the younger brother obsidian eat seen
taw doesn’t make a lot of sense the
title but I’ll come back to that in a
moment all of the individuals in this
room bear that title the obsidians the
brothers top on this wall we see another
one of these tables a table again a
series of numbers bars and dots and
zeros that sum up Maya cycles of time
that combine mathematically all of the
cycles they thought were important
whether that was the 260 day cycle of
the ceremonial year based upon the
period of human gestation tying
themselves into the calendar system
whether it was the 365 day solar year or
the combination of those two a period of
eighteen thousand nine hundred and
eighty days or whether it was the five
hundred and eighty four day cycle of
Venus or the seven hundred and eighty
day cycle of Mars are the 117 day cycle
of Mercury some of you have fallen
asleep in the back and my apologies now
if those numbers mean anything to you
they mean I don’t know enough about
numbers right this is a room where these
things were being figured out each one
of these four numbers can be factored by
all of the numbers I just told you it’s
like a math problem this is about a room
full of people a room full of guys
getting together and figuring out
unlocking the keys to
universe this is no different than our
physicists looking for a god particle
this is them trying to understand how
they fit in how their lives can be tied
to the cycles large and small that they
can observe and predict around them
that’s what the Maya calendar is that’s
what the Maya calendar means the numbers
that we see in play here the one one of
them seventeen Bach Tunes it projects
thousands of years if it’s projecting
from the base date it’s well into the
future
if it’s projecting from our date in the
past from a previous creation it still
makes its way beyond the date that were
recently approaching the Maya didn’t
have a sense of time coming to an end
they had a sense of themselves involved
with the cycles of time around them for
those of you that want to see what a
codex looks like this is the dresden the
tables that I’ve just shown you could
have been taken directly from this book
except that this book was painted 500
years at a minimum after those walls now
what’s really remarkable off those walls
is they were painted over and over again
their blackboards this isn’t something
that’s permanent right this isn’t a text
to endure for the ages this is a table
to be used this is a table to be
replaced it’s a table to be effaced and
redrawn repainted in much the way that
the codices were corrected now who were
these guys who are these people who
lived in this space who used this space
we saw each scene talk young brother
obsidian we saw him on the one wall but
who else let’s look at the other wall on
this wall we see much like that one face
that we could see on the east wall we
now see three
all painted in black three figures
wearing loincloths the largest of those
figures is named Sehun tock
senior obsidian older brother obsidian
one of these brother obsidians the the
brothers top we see these characters and
it doesn’t look like a Maya court scene
a scene in which everyone appears before
the king dressed in their finery these
guys are in loin cloths they wear only
two medallions one on their chest one in
their headdress a single feather all
painted in black like the night sky
these are our scholars the one that we
saw on the other wall with a single
medallion on his chest
he’s the youthful one he’s the one in
training he’s also the one closest to
the king it’s entirely possible that
they are even related this is part of a
story that were just now imagining could
exist in the Maya lowlands because until
the discovery of this painting we had no
idea that we would ever see anything
like this not just the art but the
science behind it now for those that are
concerned that the calendar is ending
I’ll just say a few words this is the
Maya Long Count this is actually today’s
date in the Maya Long Count
the date is 12 1919 1618 each of those
numbers represents a period of time 18
days the Kean the most basic unit of
time the Sun rises the Sun sets it rises
again one Keane the next digit sixteen
groups of twenty we like to count in
tens the Maya like 20s we wear shoes
they didn’t it’s very simple 16 we NAS
20 day periods nineteen three hundred
and sixty day periods
19 7,200 day periods 12 144,000 day
periods since the zero day a particular
day that we count forward from it’s also
a day that we can count backward from we
can count into the past now this day
today happens to be 1 million eight
hundred and seventy one thousand nine
hundred and seventy eight days since
that day tomorrow it continues to count
we get ever closer to approaching doom
for some reason our society is obsessed
with groups of zeros nothing is more
terrifying to us than zeros grouped
together like a gang of them what will
they do what if there are more of them
in 2000 there were three zeroes now in
the Maya calendar there are four that’s
all what happens after this day 1
million eight hundred and seventy two
thousand days after day one what would
happen for the ancient Maya what they
talked about was that period endings in
general were days that were important in
the same way that we might look forward
to a big number
on the odometer in our car that we might
say I’m almost to ten thousand miles
I’m totally gonna watch I’m gonna watch
it until it switches over to ten
thousand miles
oh what’s that damn it
none of us probably think that at a
hundred thousand miles that the car will
vanish
we don’t think to ourselves I hope I’m
close to home when I had a hundred
thousand miles because this baby is
gonna disappear and I’m gonna have to
walk right it’s a monumental occasion
its momentous we look at everything that
would be awesome but exactly like that
odometer what happens at this big unit
of time what takes place what if you
miss it that’s an awfully long wait to
see it go by again and that’s the reason
it was important that’s the reason that
this ending the 13000 zero date was
recorded a couple of times during the
classic period because the people that
recorded it were looking forward in time
to the largest change in the calendar
they could imagine that’s how the Maya
thought of time they thought of
themselves being just a tiny bit in the
middle of an enormous expanse of time
that extended into the past and extended
into the future their hope was to be
able to use their knowledge of the past
to guide the future that’s certainly our
hope that’s why we look to the Maya we
think maybe they know more about this
stuff than we do maybe they do the
important thing here is that when we
look to the Maya we have to know that
we’re looking at ourselves we’re looking
at people like us we’re not looking at
an alien race with some special
knowledge of the universe we’re looking
at a group of human beings that we’re
trying to figure out how they fit in
that’s who we are when we meet the Maya
on our time travel we should be greeting
them not as strangers
not as foreigners unknown to us but we
should be looking at them like friends
long-lost friends that have a really
kind of interesting view of sacrifice
but nonetheless they’re us and we’re
then and we seem to be obsessed with the
end of time but they were only obsessed
with calculating the continuation of
time have a good night
you
of planets and stars and the moon and
the Sun because those were the cycles
that the Maya tied their existence to
their hope was to be able to use their
knowledge of the past to guide the
future that’s what the Maya calendar
means coming out this evening and I’m
pretty sure that there aren’t many
people this year who haven’t heard about
the ancient Maya who haven’t heard about
their calendar and haven’t heard that
they predicted the end of the world in
just a few weeks time so if you’ve come
out tonight and this is weighing heavily
upon your minds fret not I intend to
send you home reassured now all too
often when we think of lost
civilizations like the Maya we think of
them as very different from us distant
foreign even alien but tonight I hope to
reintroduce you to the Maya to bring you
into their lives through their history
to share with you their passions through
their art in essence I would like to
take you on a journey sort of back in
time together and as is the hope with
any travel to a little-known place when
we arrive back home our hope is that we
better understand the place we visited
and we also understand ourselves and
where we’ve come from a little bit
better as well now this is Ian Graham
and this was just in on a normal day you
know Ian
probably one of the most fascinating
people ever to be born took up the call
he sort of followed in the footsteps of
people like morally and Maudsley
documenting these ruins in these
monuments in the forests of Guatemala
and Mexico and he became prominent in
the 1970s because when he was out there
doing it he was battling looters he was
dodging bullets he was doing all of the
things that those sort of fictional
archaeologists do in movies that’s what
Ian had to do in real life and we even
have the photograph of him with his whip
so we’re just saying Ian Graham the real
Indiana Jones well Ian began a project
called the corpus of Maya hieroglyphic
inscriptions and Ian actually received a
MacArthur Genius award for his
contributions to the decipherment of
Maya hieroglyphs not because Ian himself
could read Maya hieroglyphs or decipher
them at all but because his life has
been dedicated to simply recording these
monuments before they vanished into the
hands of private collections and looters
around the world that by documenting
them before they were lost
he actually provided the corpus of
material that a pig refers would use to
decipher Maya hieroglyphs and it’s only
because of that work that today we can
read about 90% of what we find of what
the Maya wrote now I should say that
when I began studying the Maya we were
really just beginning to unravel that
history I should also say that I wanted
to be Ian Graham I eventually did get
the chance to work for Ian Graham I was
simply going out to verify the presence
of a couple of monuments that Ian had
found decades earlier and had reburied
so that looters wouldn’t find them my
job was simply to go out
and refined them to go where he had
already been to find what he had already
found I wasn’t very good at it I began
at Ian’s house the first thing I was
told by the guide he told me to hire was
that we can’t get there it’s just too
far away there is however a place it’s
very close we’d simply travel up through
Tikal and through wash achtung and from
Washington it’s really just about a
three-hour trip there are these
hieroglyphic monuments three of them in
fact that have recently been uncovered
by looting and we will go and find them
document that you take pictures we’ll be
back later today this is the road to
shell tomb that we took it’s in fact a
very nice part of the road it’s the part
where the road opens up and I think hey
I think and get a picture here we of
course happens not long after that
picture upon a tree fallen in the forest
I’m pretty sure it made a sound now this
is I love this picture I love this
picture because this is the crew that we
have it was myself few other individuals
we had two machetes and a chain a
chainsaw
probably would have been more useful in
this case but a chain is what we had and
we thought you know we’ll do we’ll just
use the vehicle and we’ll haul this tree
well unfortunately also weren’t driving
a semi trailer or a bulldozer so we were
unable to move that tree but I mean
really what are the chances we’d find
another one and when we just cut a path
around the tree we drove around it
should be fine how many trees do you
think we found ok well more than 118 is
actually the winner 18 is the winning
number 18 trees 12 and a half hours we
eventually arrived at Schulten we spend
the night there
the next day we continued walking on our
way we eventually find the site of San
Bartolo we eventually find an
archeological site I head out of the Sun
into a looters excavation
and get to see this it’s incredible to
look at the artistry of it the last time
a wall painting had been found in the
Maya area was in 1946 it had been 55
years
I certainly had not found any of the
things that Ian had sent me out to find
but I had gotten very lucky and the
perseverance of continuing to walk was
rewarded by finding this and I got very
lucky and that I didn’t have to go home
empty-handed and that I didn’t die also
a bonus these are the paintings at some
Bartolo the story itself is remarkable
the quality of the painting is stunning
the story tells us of a patron deity of
Kings that sets up the world that makes
a sacrifice of his own blood and of a
series of animals at for trees
representing the four corners of the
world and he does that in order to set
up the world that Kings will one day
rule where Kings will sit upon
scaffolding and will receive their
headdresses from attendants climbing
ladders these are the divine foundations
of kingship and the ceremonies
associated with the coronation of Kings
that would exist in the Maya lowlands
for the next thousand years and they are
painted on the walls at San Bartolo in
the first century BC now this one comes
from a student of mine actually max
Chamberlain who the very day I finished
the 10 years of work to consolidate and
protect the Sun Bartolo murals the day
the last stone of that consolidation
work went into place this is the mural
that max found now you’re looking at
this going ok you may be thinking the
same thing I was thinking nice mural max
like I’m no mural snob but okay fine I’m
a mural snob I mean it’s very impressive
but I think I see a line there
well done well done you this is not
something I’ll have to worry about I’m
glad that you found it he found it
decided to take what he called the
Saturno method I’ll just poke my head
around looters excavations until I find
a mural like that is never gonna work
again he’s like it did he worked fine
now it’s interesting as I said well max
you know it’s disappointing there’s not
much we can see but certainly I’m
surprised that there’s anything here at
all this in fact wasn’t a temple this is
the house this actually wasn’t even a
terribly impressive house the building
themselves are just it’s a small mound
it’s a few meters tall you can see that
it’s right below the surface well first
of all paintings shouldn’t be preserved
here something Tamiya didn’t paint
murals they probably painted them all
over the places that they don’t preserve
in the Maya loewen’s those changes in
temperature and humidity are horrible
for plaster and paint they destroy them
and that little bit that was exposed by
looters we don’t know how long it was
exposed but we know that at this point
there was more mural there than I had
imagined I said to max well I’m gonna
excavate just a little bit we’ll just
see how big the room was certainly
there’s not gonna be anything there but
at least we can say that used to be this
big you know there’s no painting now but
there used to be something so we
excavated I excavated just a little bit
and that’s the back wall of the room
that you see through the looters tunnel
was only about 20 centimeters from where
the looters had stopped I excavated it I
thought holy cow max by Joe you’ve done
it awesome there’s another mural I
thought I was out they keep dragging me
back in so
but this mural so different than San
Bartolo one of the walls the paint is
almost invisible it’s very close to the
surface it’s the exterior wall it’s on
the east side it’s the wall that would
have received the most light through the
doorway when the
was in use but on that wall which you’re
looking at her saying I’m not seeing a
lot we can still see some we see an
individual who’s face painted black it’s
I staring upwards but more importantly
on this wall is that there are these
areas that are covered in Maya texts
some of them minuscule some of them
longer but none of them containing the
type of historical information that we
might find on a steel ax that we might
expect to find on a classic period mural
in fact the text that we see on this
wall is really unlike any text that
we’ve ever seen in the classic period so
I say to max well not only did you find
a painting you found something
unlike anything else we’ve ever seen one
of those paintings is this it’s fairly
simple the series of columns of Mayan
numbers each one of those columns is
capped by a glyph of the moon and in
fact the patron of the moon that applies
to that particular six-month lunar
period this is a mile lunar table it’s a
series of days added upon days in order
to precisely predict the moon’s path
through this guy to precisely predict
its period now I say that because it
predicts the period of the moon so that
it’s off by about 20 seconds each year
over a period of 13 years this is simply
the type of table that you would see in
a Maya codex this is the reconstructed
table it’s really quite impressive
it’s simply adding lunar months lunar
semesters 177 days at a time but like
our leap year every once in a while
every six periods it adds an extra day
as a correction in order to keep the
mathematics of easily calculating the
moon’s period in line with the actual
observations of the moon why did the
Maya do this why were they obsessed
with the movement of planets and stars
and the moon and the Sun because those
were the cycles of their lives
those were the cycles that they tied
their existence to that they tied the
events of their daily lives and the
events and the royal lives of kings on
the back wall of this room even better
preserved and more impressive we see the
portrait of the king we see the King
attended by an individual who is titled
as the younger brother obsidian eat seen
taw doesn’t make a lot of sense the
title but I’ll come back to that in a
moment all of the individuals in this
room bear that title the obsidians the
brothers top on this wall we see another
one of these tables a table again a
series of numbers bars and dots and
zeros that sum up Maya cycles of time
that combine mathematically all of the
cycles they thought were important
whether that was the 260 day cycle of
the ceremonial year based upon the
period of human gestation tying
themselves into the calendar system
whether it was the 365 day solar year or
the combination of those two a period of
eighteen thousand nine hundred and
eighty days or whether it was the five
hundred and eighty four day cycle of
Venus or the seven hundred and eighty
day cycle of Mars are the 117 day cycle
of Mercury some of you have fallen
asleep in the back and my apologies now
if those numbers mean anything to you
they mean I don’t know enough about
numbers right this is a room where these
things were being figured out each one
of these four numbers can be factored by
all of the numbers I just told you it’s
like a math problem this is about a room
full of people a room full of guys
getting together and figuring out
unlocking the keys to
universe this is no different than our
physicists looking for a god particle
this is them trying to understand how
they fit in how their lives can be tied
to the cycles large and small that they
can observe and predict around them
that’s what the Maya calendar is that’s
what the Maya calendar means the numbers
that we see in play here the one one of
them seventeen Bach Tunes it projects
thousands of years if it’s projecting
from the base date it’s well into the
future
if it’s projecting from our date in the
past from a previous creation it still
makes its way beyond the date that were
recently approaching the Maya didn’t
have a sense of time coming to an end
they had a sense of themselves involved
with the cycles of time around them for
those of you that want to see what a
codex looks like this is the dresden the
tables that I’ve just shown you could
have been taken directly from this book
except that this book was painted 500
years at a minimum after those walls now
what’s really remarkable off those walls
is they were painted over and over again
their blackboards this isn’t something
that’s permanent right this isn’t a text
to endure for the ages this is a table
to be used this is a table to be
replaced it’s a table to be effaced and
redrawn repainted in much the way that
the codices were corrected now who were
these guys who are these people who
lived in this space who used this space
we saw each scene talk young brother
obsidian we saw him on the one wall but
who else let’s look at the other wall on
this wall we see much like that one face
that we could see on the east wall we
now see three
all painted in black three figures
wearing loincloths the largest of those
figures is named Sehun tock
senior obsidian older brother obsidian
one of these brother obsidians the the
brothers top we see these characters and
it doesn’t look like a Maya court scene
a scene in which everyone appears before
the king dressed in their finery these
guys are in loin cloths they wear only
two medallions one on their chest one in
their headdress a single feather all
painted in black like the night sky
these are our scholars the one that we
saw on the other wall with a single
medallion on his chest
he’s the youthful one he’s the one in
training he’s also the one closest to
the king it’s entirely possible that
they are even related this is part of a
story that were just now imagining could
exist in the Maya lowlands because until
the discovery of this painting we had no
idea that we would ever see anything
like this not just the art but the
science behind it now for those that are
concerned that the calendar is ending
I’ll just say a few words this is the
Maya Long Count this is actually today’s
date in the Maya Long Count
the date is 12 1919 1618 each of those
numbers represents a period of time 18
days the Kean the most basic unit of
time the Sun rises the Sun sets it rises
again one Keane the next digit sixteen
groups of twenty we like to count in
tens the Maya like 20s we wear shoes
they didn’t it’s very simple 16 we NAS
20 day periods nineteen three hundred
and sixty day periods
19 7,200 day periods 12 144,000 day
periods since the zero day a particular
day that we count forward from it’s also
a day that we can count backward from we
can count into the past now this day
today happens to be 1 million eight
hundred and seventy one thousand nine
hundred and seventy eight days since
that day tomorrow it continues to count
we get ever closer to approaching doom
for some reason our society is obsessed
with groups of zeros nothing is more
terrifying to us than zeros grouped
together like a gang of them what will
they do what if there are more of them
in 2000 there were three zeroes now in
the Maya calendar there are four that’s
all what happens after this day 1
million eight hundred and seventy two
thousand days after day one what would
happen for the ancient Maya what they
talked about was that period endings in
general were days that were important in
the same way that we might look forward
to a big number
on the odometer in our car that we might
say I’m almost to ten thousand miles
I’m totally gonna watch I’m gonna watch
it until it switches over to ten
thousand miles
oh what’s that damn it
none of us probably think that at a
hundred thousand miles that the car will
vanish
we don’t think to ourselves I hope I’m
close to home when I had a hundred
thousand miles because this baby is
gonna disappear and I’m gonna have to
walk right it’s a monumental occasion
its momentous we look at everything that
would be awesome but exactly like that
odometer what happens at this big unit
of time what takes place what if you
miss it that’s an awfully long wait to
see it go by again and that’s the reason
it was important that’s the reason that
this ending the 13000 zero date was
recorded a couple of times during the
classic period because the people that
recorded it were looking forward in time
to the largest change in the calendar
they could imagine that’s how the Maya
thought of time they thought of
themselves being just a tiny bit in the
middle of an enormous expanse of time
that extended into the past and extended
into the future their hope was to be
able to use their knowledge of the past
to guide the future that’s certainly our
hope that’s why we look to the Maya we
think maybe they know more about this
stuff than we do maybe they do the
important thing here is that when we
look to the Maya we have to know that
we’re looking at ourselves we’re looking
at people like us we’re not looking at
an alien race with some special
knowledge of the universe we’re looking
at a group of human beings that we’re
trying to figure out how they fit in
that’s who we are when we meet the Maya
on our time travel we should be greeting
them not as strangers
not as foreigners unknown to us but we
should be looking at them like friends
long-lost friends that have a really
kind of interesting view of sacrifice
but nonetheless they’re us and we’re
then and we seem to be obsessed with the
end of time but they were only obsessed
with calculating the continuation of
time have a good night
you
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