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Quetzalcoatl, actually an otld hero or king or so,; when the Teltecs conquered Mayan culture, they oppressed them many things, and this one way one of them. Quetzalcoatl existed before them, but not as agod (as far as I remember). The Maya also believed in a complex cycle so they had to offer the most precious things to the Gods they could give - Hearts. As "food" for the Gods in order not to let them become weak and so impose the End of the World. About swallowing the sun : Nut, the Aegyptian goddess did this every evening, and every morning she gave birth to the sun again. Quoting my self : A PM (or PN) I had once written to Rincewind : From: AlrikFassbauer
Hello.
Well, I'll try to translate and explain.
Plese note that it is extremely difficult for me to do both into English - I don't have much experience with English archaeological terms.
Also, having the book before me and writing at the same time creates some kind of difficulty with the hands - I definitively need more of them for such tasks !
As a sidenote, the Maya saw a rabbit in the moon (I've heard the chinese do, too), and not a face like other cultures (here in Germany, for example )
- The maya used a number system based on 20, unlike or 10-based system.
- They used actually two calendars : one for normal life, and one for aspects of religion.
- This "Ritual Calendar" (translated from German) consists of "a combination of 20 day names with the numbers 1-13".
- This calendar ended after 260 days = 20 x 13 days.
- The solar year is - according to the Maya - 365.2420 days long.
- As a sidenote, the very few Codices Science has inherited from the past contains almost only computations, mostly about dates (within one of the two calendars). That led to the opinion the Maya were a friendly folks of astronoms. Untrue, as archaeologists have proved. But these ciomputations actually showed that the Maya were almost unique in Mathematics - since the letters for numbers were the far earliest which had been decoded by scientists, we know much more about their mathematics than about anything else. That's in principle how the view of the Mayas as excellent astronoms and Mathematics arose.
- the normal calendar consisted of 360 days and consisted of 18 "periods" of 20 days , what we would call months in our system.
- the end of this year of 360 days had an appendage of a "month" called Uayeb , which was said to be cursed or at least to be a month of bad luck. It was only 5 days long.
- correlating both calendars, every date in a text or list was identified by a "name" consisting of the day of the one calendar and the month of the other one (at least that's how I understood it). As example there is printed " 1 Imix (day) - 5 Pop (month).
- the book also says that since one calendar was so much shorter than the other one, they both needed 18.980 days to meet again at the same day. THat was 52 solar years.
- Every time after those 52 years, the priests said that if the gods failed to start a new zyklus, the world would be doomed. Thus they killed people , cutting their hearts from them, as some kind of "offer" to the Gods - food, energy, I don't know how to call it. The Maya thought they just needed it for not to fail.
- the Toltecs, after conquering the Maya civilization were seemingly almost obsessed by that, creating the so-called "Flower Wars" which had no purpose except catching people for such rituals. Very bloody indeed.
- the Maya had a "year zero", which was used as a fixed point to start their calendar. Christian calendars use the estimated Birrth of Jesius, other calendars have other such "fixpoints".
- the "fixpoint" of the Maya calendar was at "13.0.0.0.0.a Ahau, 8 Cumkú" is - the book says - the 2. of August in the year 3114 v. Chr. (christian calendar). Scientists don't know what this date means or could mean.
- This date comes from the "long counting " or "Initialseries" (terms from the book), which consisted of 5 periods : Baktun, Katun, Tun, Uinal, Kin. A Kin in this system is a day.
- this sytem exists parellel to the calendars ( at least that's how I've understood it).
- there is another system, the "Short Counting" , as well.
- now comes the interesting part . I'll quote the book :
"After the same computation, the era created at that point [ the date I've quoted above) would end at the 24. December 2012."
- a Kin is the same as a day in the "Initialseries".
- an Uinal is a "month" consisting of 20 days
- a Tun is a collection of 360 days -> a year of the "normal calendar".
- a Katun is 20 years.
- a Baktun consists of 20 x 20 years ( 20 Katun = 400 Tun = 144.000 Kin).
- 20 Baktun = 1 Pictun
- the solar calendar consisted of the following months :
- Pop, Ztotz, Tzec, Muan, Pax, Uo, Zip, Zac, Ceh, Xul, Yaxkin, Mol, Chen, Yax, Mac, Kankin, Kayab, Cumkú (look at the date above) , Uayeb (the bad-luck-month consisting of 5 days).
- the days names were :
Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan, Chicchan, Cimí, Manik, Lamat, Muluc, Oc, Chuen, Eb, Ben, Ix, Men, Cib, Caban, Etz-nab, Cauac, Ahau.
Please keep in mind that these are names probably translated into German . I know from some Egyptian names, for example, that they are a bit differently written in English literature.
- Very important ! : These names could also mean actual things of normal life, too, like Dog, or Water, or other things. Everything could be interpreted in many way. That's what the decoding of the Hieroglyphs / Letters of the Maya made so difficult.
- The Maya had a symbol for the Number 0 (zero) . It looked usually like a shell.
- If you have any questions, then ask me. But I don't know whether I can anwer *all* of your questins and with nearly unlimited grade of detail.
- Last note : If you can get this book, I'd recommend to buy it, because it's very interesting and very detailed, concerning the letters and their meaning(s).
That's All (Genesis).
Alrik.
Last edited by AlrikFassbauer; 27/03/04 11:58 PM.
When you find a big kettle of crazy, it's best not to stir it.
--Dilbert cartoon
"Interplay.some zombiefied unlife thing going on there" - skavenhorde at RPGWatch
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