For the last 2 years, the Astronomy Department of the Houston Museum of Natural Science has searched and researched Maya ruins and writings for connections between the Mayan calendar and the ability of Maya astronomers to predict future events.

To record the passage of time, the Maya developed a 260-day ritual cycle, made up of thirteen numbers and twenty names. With this continuous running cycle, they could predict future events like the harvesting of crops and the birth of children. The Maya kept a second 365-day solar calendar of 18 months, each lasting 20 days, plus 5 extra days to complete the year. This calendar determined the growing season and the annual return of the rains. For longer time periods the Maya used a 5-number Long Count. On December 21st, 2012, for instance, this Long Count has a new beginning as the date changes from 12.19.19.17.19 to 13.0.0.0.0. This is similar to the change from 1999 to 2000 in our modern calendar and is the cause of much 2012 speculation.

Great Temples
The homeland of the Maya stretches from southern Mexico to northern Central America. Our new planetarium show, 2012: Mayan Prophecies (Now Showing!), explores the great Maya cities of Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tikal, and Palenque. For survival, the Maya created these great urban centers to store rainwater through the dry season and built observatories to determine when the annual rains would begin.

The Castillo pyramid in Chichen Itza is a temple to the feathered serpent god Kukulcan. Each of its 4 staircases has 91 steps for 364 steps in all with a top step into the temple – one step for each day of the year.  According to legend, Kukulcan returns to his pyramid on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, descending the staircase in an undulating shadow.

In the nearby Caracol observatory, astronomers watched Kukulcan, who appeared in the heavens as the planet Venus. Through motions of the brilliant Venus, they determined the will of Kukulcan and the time for human sacrifices to honor this sky god and give thanks for the rains he would soon send.

Tikal photo courtesy of Raymond Ostertag

Tikal
The Maya carved the great city of Tikal out of the rain forest in the lowlands of modern Guatemala. In this city of up to 100,000, all water came from the sky. Tikal’s rulers cleared the rain forest, channeled the water in swamps to grow crops, and built cisterns and catch basins to store water during the rainy season. Tikal’s power depended on storing enough water to last until the rains returned each spring.

Five giant pyramids helped astronomers predict when the rainy season would begin. On December 21, for instance, astronomers on Temple 4 could watch the sun rise farthest to the south, over the Pyramid of the Jaguar Priest. From this date forward, they knew that the sun would rise a little more to the north each day. At the vernal equinox, the sun would always rise over Temple 1, an event that must happen before the rains could begin.

Palenque
In the foothills of Mexico’s southern mountains, lies the Maya city of Palenque. Blessed with abundant rain and flowing rivers, the artisans of Palenque had time to create some of the most elaborate and exquisite Mayan art and the most delicate of buildings. Here inscriptions describe the beginning of the Maya long count cycle and chronicle events far into the future, but no mention of 2012.

There has been a subtle change in the sky in the 1,300 years since the time of the classic Maya. Due to the wobble of Earth’s spin axis, different stars rise with the sun in each season.

For instance, at the time of the Maya, the glowing Milky Way band was above the sun at sunrise on the winter solstice.  Now in December, the sun reaches its lowest point at noon in front of a dark rift in the Milky Way, near the direction of the galaxy’s center.

Does this mean that galactic forces are now aligned? Did the Maya predict this alignment? We have no data to indicate that the Maya recognized the 26,000-year cycle that caused this alignment. There is no documented connection between the Earth-centered Maya cosmos and our modern universe.

Classic Maya civilization did experience a great apocalypse, but it occurred long before the Spanish Conquest.

For over a millennium, the major cities of the Maya have stood abandoned – deserted by their citizens, conquered by weather and reclaimed by the rainforest. At their culture’s height, many of the Maya faced the worst drought in thousands of years. It devastated a civilization that had cut down the rainforest to grow crops and destroyed urban centers that could not store enough water for their people. In less than a hundred years, over a hundred thousand Maya disappeared, leaving their parched cities and their withered fields, rejecting the divine right and Earthly power of their kings. By the thousands they returned to the rainforest and mountains to a sustainable population and way of life.

As we sense the fragility of our own culture today, we may discover a warning for 2012 in the ruins of these great Maya cities — silent sentinels, witnesses of the apocalypse of the Maya.

Explore pyramids towering above the rainforest, designed as observatories to follow the sun. Experience the apocalypse of the Maya and discover how our fate in 2012 may be foretold in our new planetarium show 2012: Mayan Prophecies. Check out the extended preview below!