What Year are we in

bmpbmp · #1 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:11 PM

A friend and I are having a debate about our year vs mayan calendar.

He says we are really now in 2012 because out cal is 5 years off according to the birth of christ. He gave me links with his approach. I do not know enough about mayan/greorian to debunk him, can anyone clear this up for me.

Thank You

http://www.tprconline.com/index.php?topic=27238.10;wap2
Post made on Quote from: McAirman on August 30, 2007, 12:11:18 AM

also this site

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread268417/pg1

Fazor · #2 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:17 PM

Calandars are very arbitrary things, as far as years go. It just depends on what point you want to start counting from. Even if the Mayan calander started five years earlier, that's an arbitrary date aswell.

Our calandar year is based off a religious belief, but you could just as easily base it off of the date of the oldest known human remains, or the first time a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich was made.

BertL · #3 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:17 PM

"The year we live in" is quite relative. It depends on which calendar you use.

bmpbmp · #4 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:21 PM

I may have not explained myself well enough.

What I mean is he says that we are now in the year 2012 which is the end of the mayan calendar.

Which means that 2012 really equals 2007 which is now

Sorry I wasnt clear

Argos · #5 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:22 PM

This is the 44th year of the Argosian Epoch.

Fazor · #6 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:23 PM

Yeah, I got that. Sorry, mine was more a random observation than an answer; I don't know how the two systems compair. Tel him to stock up on extra canned goods and bottled water just in case.

hhEb09'1 · #7 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmpbmp

A friend and I are having a debate about our year vs mayan calendar.

He says we are really now in 2012 because out cal is 5 years off according to the birth of christ. He gave me links with his approach. I do not know enough about mayan/greorian to debunk him, can anyone clear this up for me.

No problem.

The Mayan's didn't use the birth of Christ to set up their calendar, so when it was encountered by Europeans, it was correlated with the European calendar¹. So, the start corresponds to our Gregorian August 11, 3114 BC. If the Gregorian calendar is off and we have to add five years to all dates, then we are "really" at 2012, but the Mayan calendar "ends" (actually, restarts) five years later too, in 2017.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoame...Count_calendar

Tucson_Tim · #8 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Argos

This is the 44th year of the Argosian Epoch.

A foul epoch if there ever was one.

bmpbmp · #9 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:28 PM

Hi hhEb09'1

I got your point on this, but if the mayan calendar ends in 2012 and not 2017 and if 2007 is really 2012 then the mayan calendar ends this year. Right

Fazor · #10 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:29 PM

Oh oh oh! I think I can use some deductive reasoning to answer your question, however. I don't believe the Mayans numbered their years, like our current date system. In otherwords, I don't think the tribesmemberes dated their checks, 114th of Autunmous, 1601.

The Mayan calander is simply a record of patterns related to the earth's movement, which can be translated to days. Therefore, when it's said that the Mayan calander ends in 2012, they mean that the record of days runs out in what would be our 2012.

Or to put it another way, the calander was said to end in 2012 by the person or persons who translated it in terms of their calander, the Gregorian calender.

So to answer your question, the end of the Mayan calander is (most likely, IMHO) still in OUR 2012.

hhEb09'1 · #11 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmpbmp

Hi hhEb09'1

I got your point on this, but if the mayan calendar ends in 2012 and not 2017 and if 2007 is really 2012 then the mayan calendar ends this year. Right

No, if this is really 2012, then the mayan calendar ends in 2017. If this is 2007, then the mayan calendar ends in 2012. Either way, it's five years out.

publiusr · #12 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:32 PM

I still feel like I'm still living in 1972 myself.

Oh, the gadgets are better--wait a minute--my old rotary phone sounds better than any cell phone.

Scratch that. Other than the web, not much has changed.

bmpbmp · #13 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:33 PM

Ok so if it is that simple where do the two threads that I posted get there reasoning for saying it is really 2012 now

hhEb09'1 · #14 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:34 PM

That, and the price of a coffee

Fazor · #15 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:36 PM

What threads? And whos reasoning? It's hard to tell where anyone gets their reasoning, or even if they're using reason (and for the record, "I saw it on the 'net" is not reasoning).

bmpbmp · #16 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:39 PM

I didnt say it was actual reasoning I said there reasoning. For example that if christ was really born 5 years earlier, then our calendar is 5 years off, but if the mayans did not believe in god then there calendar would be accurate which would make our 2007 there 2012. atleast that is what I understood from my links I gave.

Or am I just confused on all this.

Fazor · #17 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:48 PM

seeing as the Mayan calander was found and translated (or described) in terms of Gergorian years well after the birth or death of christ, I don't see how it would make a difference one way or the other if we were off five years. Their calender is not based off him; what are the chances that their calander was also then started within 5 years of his birth? They just happened to start keeping track of years arround that same time? What were they basing their start of the year on?

I'd still say it's pretty safe to assume that when it's understood that the Mayan calendar runs out in 2012, that's OUR 2012 being used to describe that.

bmpbmp · #18 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 05:55 PM

Ok now i think that i am not grasping the concept

Fazor · #19 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 06:18 PM

Let me see if I can word it correctly.

AFAIK, the Mayan calendar years were not numbered 0 (or 1) to 2012. The Mayan calandar was a set of divisions that accurately accounted for days and years based on the earth's orbit around the sun (like the Gregorian calender we use today).

For all I know, the start of each Mayan year might have been April 23rd on our calendars. I don't know how the years were broken down other than by number of days. But it's not important, because we don't talk about the Mayan calendar in terms of Mayan dates. We talk about the Mayan calendar in terms of Gergorian dates.

The year that Christ was born compared to the year we based our calendar on has no bearing on how we describe the calendar in our terms.

Another way to look at it is this: when they looked at the calander, instead of thinking in terms of years, think in terms of days. They didn't just look at the calendar and say, "It says it stops in 2012". They said "There's 1000 days left on this calender. In 1000 days it will be 2012. This calendar ends in 2012" (obviously it was more than 1000). It really doesn't matter when we started counting years on our calender, the Mayan calender ends 1000 days later relative to ours. So unless our calender changes sometimes between when we discover it and when it ends, the result will always be the same.

Ergo, the Mayan calendar ends in OUR year 2012.

Swift · #20 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fazor

AFAIK, the Mayan calendar years were not numbered 0 (or 1) to 2012. The Mayan calandar was a set of divisions that accurately accounted for days and years based on the earth's orbit around the sun (like the Gregorian calender we use today).

For all I know, the start of each Mayan year might have been April 23rd on our calendars. I don't know how the years were broken down other than by number of days. But it's not important, because we don't talk about the Mayan calendar in terms of Mayan dates. We talk about the Mayan calendar in terms of Gergorian dates.

Actually, that is not quite right (or I don't understand your point). The Mayans most definitely counted years (and days too). If a ruler fought a battle 12 years and 63 days after the start of his reign, it was the same 12 years and 63 days in the Mayan calendar as ours. They even took care of leap years, though they did it slightly differently than we do. The wikipedia article isn't a bad starting point. There is a very detailed, technical discussion here (Word document).

But the key question from bmpbmp is how to align the two calendars. I know we have talked about this before and I even posted some links. I'm going to be somewhat lazy and not search them out again, but they are somewhere in the forum. I did find this explanation of the correlation. From the linked article:

Quote:

The most widely accepted correlation is a variation on the oldest effort to match the long count to the European calendar. In 1897, Joseph Goodman (an American journalist who was Mark Twain's first editor), proposed that the Maya creation date, the zero long count, was in 3114 BC. Goodman's correlation was supported by the work of a Yucatecan scholar, Juan Martinez, but other correlations were more popular until J. Eric Thompson revived interest in Goodman's correlation in 1927. His work was supported by the astronomical discoveries of J.E. Teeple in 1930. Thompson reviewed the evidence again in an influential study of the question in 1937. He was able to narrow down the range of possible base dates to three days. The correlation he proposed is now usually referred to as the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson (GMT) correlation. The base dates he identified are correlation constants used to convert long counts to European calendar dates:

11 August 3114 BC (Gregorian) 6 September 3114 BC (Julian)
12 August 3114 BC (Gregorian) 7 September 3114 BC (Julian)
13 August 3114 BC (Gregorian) 8 September 3114 BC (Julian)

Each correlation constant is also expressed as a Julian Day Number (JDN). See below.

The choice between these three dates is still hotly debated, but almost all Mayanists accept one of the versions of the GMT correlation.

Nothing, as they say, is certain except death and taxes. But the GMT correlation seems nearly as certain as any deduction from the available evidence can be. Its wide acceptance survived even the drastic revision of Maya scholarship when Thompson's intellectual hold on the field was broken by a new generation of scholars. The alternatives have few supporters among Mayanists. Yet when I searched the web for information on the correlation question, I failed to turn up any account of the arguments supporting the GMT correlation. I did, however, find defenses of at least eight alternative correlations. In the result, I fear it is all too easy for new students of the Maya to get the impression that the GMT correlation is dubious, or worse, an example of academic myopia. Some internet savants even hint darkly at conspiracy

There is A TON of more information about the difficulties of the correlation on the website.

@bmpbmp - I don't mean this in a rude way, but So What. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the Mayans had any particular insight into the end of the world and there is no particular reason to think that the Mayans thought anything more of the end of a Calendar Round then we did of the year 2000. Other than the potential (unfullfilled) of computer problems, the world didn't end in 2000 either. I don't see why it matters.

Van Rijn · #21 (**permalink**) 19-October-2007, 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swift

@bmpbmp - I don't mean this in a rude way, but So What. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the Mayans had any particular insight into the end of the world and there is no particular reason to think that the Mayans thought anything more of the end of a Calendar Round then we did of the year 2000. Other than the potential (unfullfilled) of computer problems, the world didn't end in 2000 either. I don't see why it matters.

When I first saw this thread, I was hoping that there might be an excuse to get some of the 2012=doom silliness out of the way for this year. But, it looks like we'll have to wait through 2012 before this goes away.

A question though: Are any prominent groups thinking of ways to push this past 2012? As in: "No, it isn't really 2012 when bad stuff is supposed to happen, it's 2015 (or 16 or 17)."