This year's Maya Meetings at Austin about 2012

For over three decades, the Maya Meetings sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin have annually showcased the work of the most accomplished scholars in the field of Mayan Studies, men and women who have dedicated their professional lives to better understanding the ancient Maya and their contemporary descendants.

This year, in response to the exponential increase in public fascination with the coming fruition of the 13th pik cycle in the ancient Long Count calendar that will occur in December of 2012, several widely respected academics offered their personal and professional perspectives on what has become known as the 2012 phenomenon. Among the distinguished presenters were archeoastronomer Anthony Aveni; prominent anthropologists Kathryn Reese-Taylor, John Hoopes, Karl Taube and William Hanks; and esteemed epigrapher David Stuart, the conference organizer.

As we know, the academic community has consistently described the international interest in the year 2012 and Mayan calendrics as a poorly informed product of misguided New Age ideologies with few substantive connections to the Mayan world. University researchers express particular dismay regarding several unfounded claims such as the myriad beliefs surrounding the famed Mayan crystal skulls. In over a century of painstaking scientific excavation, not a single crystal skull has been documented at any Mayan site, nor have any appeared from within contemporary Mayan communities.

Similarly, scholars have been put off by assertions within the 2012 phenomenon connecting the ancient Maya with extraterrestrials from the Pleiades, a cluster of some 1,000 stars more than 400 lights years away. Not one Mayan hieroglyphic text makes reference to a Maya-Pleiadian linkage, nor does the K’iche’ Popol Vuh, the Chilam Balam books or, for that matter, any historical Mayan text. In fact, the only Maya who have referred to cultural ties with Pleiadians are a tiny group that has worked regularly with New Age teachers from the United States, basically the same Maya who speak of crystal skulls.

Scholars are especially upset with extremist claims that 2012 will mark the end of the Mayan calendar and even the end of the world itself. There is now a fear in the academic world that harmful consequences may arise from such profound misunderstandings in some New Age circles. Prof. John Hoopes even expressed concerns that some of the 2012 movement’s ideological currents have historical similarities to esoteric dimensions of Nazism. At one point a PowerPoint slide appeared with the famed “Hunab Ku” image popularized by José Argüelles on one side, matched with a Nazi swastika on the other, a rather extreme visual statement that served as a virtual bookend opposite the barely comprehensible idealism of this recently deceased “father” of the 2012 movement.

Listening to the various speakers at this year’s conference, one could sense their sincere desire to get accurate information about the Maya and 2012 out to the general public. However, their noble aspirations occasionally gave way to frustration, condescending attitudes and intermittent bursts of derisive laughter regarding the leading figures that have helped create the 2012 phenomenon. Some denigrating comments about Argüelles from more than one speaker seemed particularly ill-timed since José had died just a few days earlier. Hunbatz Men, Carl Johan Calleman, Lawrence Joseph and Daniel Pinchbeck were depicted by several speakers as uninformed charlatans focused primarily on fame and fortune.

John Major Jenkins received his fair share of criticism due to generalized skepticism concerning his “Galactic Alignment” theory, but since his ideas are better researched than others in the 2012 phenomenon, the analyses of his work by the speakers were more serious and tempered.

Prof. Aveni’s presentation, for example, included a beautifully rendered animation of the winter solstice alignment between the sun and the band of the Milky Way that allowed him to show the entirety of the 26,000 year sweep of the precessional cycle, a brilliant visualization of the astronomy behind Jenkins’ theory. As the cursor moved the winter solstice sun through the signs of the zodiac, he asked audience members to yell “stop” when they thought the sun was at its midpoint in crossing the broad band of the Milky Way. His software instantaneously informed us of the precise year that had been guessed. Answers varied by several hundred years on either side of 2012, leading Prof. Aveni to conclude that ancient Mayan astronomers were in no position to pinpoint the year 2012 for the solstice sun/Milky Way conjunction.

However, the demonstration seemed to miss the point. Ancient star-gazers would have no reason to be concerned with such astronomical accuracy, but would indeed have marveled at the macro level shifting of the stars that was slowly bringing the sun into alignment with that great white band across the night sky, just as depicted in Prof. Aveni’s engaging computer animation. Instead, they would have been attracted to the December 21, 2012 date because it

1. fits perfectly with various aspects of their calendric system based on 13 periods of 20 k’atuns each;
2. occurs on a winter solstice (According to Aveni, many archeological sites in the area where the Long Count was likely created have a solstice orientation); and
3. if indeed the pre-Classic astronomers knew about precessional movement, it serves as an approximate marking of the winter solstice sun/galaxy conjunction.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there will ever be sufficient evidence for John Jenkins’ to conclusively proof his theories, but I find myself more intrigued by its basic components as time goes on.

As Mam Maya say when bidding farewell, “cheb’i” (take it slow)