Dec 21, 2012

I’ve started on what may be my last calendar—a rather mundane 2-year job.  December 2012 is on the back of January 2011, so when I eventually flip over December 2011 and turn the thing around, I can start anew through 2012.  Sadly, this has replaced my 2010 Jets’ Flight Crew (cheerleaders) daily reminder of advancing age.  My Mayan calendar is in the top desk drawer.

We take them for granted, but calendars are pretty interesting—at least the history of them.  The one I’m staring at is the “Christian” (or to be more politically correct “modern”) Calendar.  It has its roots in the Julian calendar of similar nomenclature and structure.  The year count was different of course, the Julian starting at the “founding of Rome” (ab urbe condita or AUC). 

About 523 C.E., a Scythian monk by the name of Dionysius Exiguus, tasked with converting calculations of the date for Easter from the Jewish calendar to the Julian, decided to count the Julian year from Anno Domini as well.  He placed the beginning of year 1 of the Christian Era at January 1, 754 AUC, erroneously calculating the birth of Jesus as December 25, 753 AUC.

The Julian calendar, however, had too frequent leap years—every 4th year (originally every 3rd)—and by the 16th century C.E., the equinoxes and solstices were coming noticeably late.  Ten days late.  So Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull on February 24, 1582 that declared (1) Oct 4, 1582 would be immediately followed by Oct 15, 1582 to eliminate the 10 day lag, and (2) the algorithm of one Aloysius Lilius, a Neapolitan physician, that excluded century years unless they were divisible by 400 as leap years would be heretofore enforced.

Some of the ramifications of this bull were: (1) there was no Columbus Day in 1582; (2) on my 60th birthday, I was one day older than my grandmother on her 60th birthday (I experienced a leap year in 2000, she didn’t in 1900); and (3) Protestant northern Europe said the bull was bull and a Catholic plot.  England eventually adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1751 making George Washington’s life span 10 days shorter than his birth/death dates would indicate.

And then there were the Mayans.

The speciously named “History” Channel recently aired a montage of visual effects accompanied by a bizarre narration of end-of-days scenarios somehow connected to planetary alignments, the galactic plane, the secret planet Nibiru and bronze age mezzo-Americans.  I thought it at first to be a “mockumentary,” with talking heads captioned as authors of Bermuda Triangle and/or ancient alien books, spouting all sorts of gobblygook in straight-faced earnestness.  Think Christopher Guest in “Best in Show.”  Alas, these guys were serious.

The Mayans, however, can count keen astronomical observers and accomplished mathematicians among their ranks.  They had three calendars: one kept track of days of the “week;” one of annual events; and a third—the infamous Long Count of the Doomsday theorists.

The “weekly” calendar actually combines two cycles, one of 13 days that were numbered (1-13) and one of 20 “named” days (here indicated as “A” through “T”).  They ran concurrently, so starting with day “1A”, the next would be “2B” up through “13M.” Then the numbers recycle while the names continue: “1N,” “2O,”…”7T”, then “8A” as the named cycle repeats.  It won’t be “1A” again for 260 (13x20) days. “T.G.I-13T” was the common phrase, I guess.  The number of these 260 day cycles was not tracked.

The Annual calendar consisted of eighteen 20-day months plus 5 extra non-month days, 365 days in all.  The number of these 365-day cycles was not tracked either, but, combined with the 260-day weekly cycle, New Years Day would be a “1A” once every 52 years—a cycle called the “Calendar Round.”  For the Aztecs, Mayan descendants using the same calendar centuries later, the end of a Calendar Round was marked with great insecurity as to whether there would BE another round.  On one of those Calendar Round roll-over years, Cortez showed up.  “Hola!”

 The Mayans knew that this 365-day “year” was not in synch with the astronomical cycles (there are no Mayan leap years).  But, they concluded that, for example, the first day of their “New Sun” month would be coincident with the winter solstice only twice in 1,101,600 days.  Amazingly, that meant (although they didn’t express it in these terms) they had effectively determined a solar year to be 365.242036 days, which is slightly more accurate than the 365.2425 days of the Gregorian calendar.

A Long Count “date” is a 5 “digit” number, A.B.C.D.E.  Unlike our number system where the same 10 symbols are used in each decimal “place,” the Mayans had a different set of symbols and different amounts of them in each place.

The right hand, “E” place is a day count and there are 20 symbols (0-19). D would be month-like (20 days) and there are 18 symbols for them (18x20=360—year-like). There are 20 symbols in the “C” place, and another 20 in the “B” place (summing to 144,000 days), and finally 12 “A’s” (0-11)

The Long Count was evidently put into operation on 7.13.0.0.0 (1,101,600 days after their distant “Creation Date” (0.0.0.0.0). Not much different from the Christian Calendar of the 6th century being back-dated to 1 A.D.  All the symbols & places of the Long Count, in every combination, will be used up on 11.19.19.17.19, which happens to correspond (and there is some consensus for this) to Dec. 20 or 21, 2012.  And the world ends…

Or… the odometer rolls over.

Now my Honda has 158,113 miles on it right now and I don’t realistically expect it (or maybe me) to reach 999,999.  But if it does, the conclusion that it would just disappear when the odometer maxes-out seems like—well, fodder for the History Channel.

 

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