Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials (22 page)

The creation myth of the Cherokee (northwest Georgia) starts this way: "In the beginning, all living things lived and dwelled above in the sky...the occupants of the sky home were anxious to get down for the sky home was getting more crowded all the time...."16

The Miccosukee tribe (South Florida) claim: "A long time ago, a tribe came down from the heavens to the Mikasuki swamps in the north of Florida. They swam on to the land and built the city of Mikasuki. The name of the Miccosukee Indians derives from this town.""

In British Columbia (Pacific Coast of Canada) the Salishan people tell: "Once the Earth people wanted to make war on the Sky people ...... 11

Also at home in Canada are the Ojibway tribe (Ontario, Canada). According to their lore, they also belong to the society of the "sky people."" These "sky people" are "not angels but humans with lighter skin and scarlet red tunics with hoods."20

And, of course, the Hopi Indians (Arizona) also speak of the "heavenly teachers."" They even make representations of these teachers in the form of dolls to this day.

These are just a few examples from the North American continent. I can't shake off the feeling that the academic Maya specialists view their quetzal serpent as something unique, but, after reading through the millennia-old legends and histories of other cultures, it has become clear to me that the gods from back then (that is, the extraterrestrials) shared a lot of knowledge with our forefathers-most notably in the field of astronomy. And there are even eye-witness accounts from people who were there at the time and wrote of their experiences."

he Maya Calendar Wheels

The Mayan calendar-now decipherable thanks to Diego de Landa's basic research-now brings us to the next piece of craziness from this jungle people. Its smallest unit was a "week" with 13 days. Just imagine a small cogwheel with 13 teeth, engraved with the Maya numbers from 1 to 13. Next comes a "month" of 20 days-in our mind's eye, a cogwheel with 20 teeth. Now bring the small cog and the larger cog together and mark the zero position-on the small cog the point for "one"; on the larger one the Maya word imix. After 13 turns, the two wheels return to this start position. In total, 260 teeth have run through this cycle, equivalent to a Maya year with 260 days.

But-everybody knows this-a year doesn't have 260 days. It has 365 days. A 260-day calendar would be no use to man nor beast on our Earth. You couldn't mark off spring or fall; there'd be no fixed date for sowing or harvesting. To this day, no one knows why the Maya used a 260-day year. Therefore it is known as the "god year" or "holy year." Among the Maya it was known as Tzolk'in. All of the Mayans' religious rituals took place according to the rhythm of the Tzolk'in, all of their holy dates can be read from the Tzolk'in. For everyday use or agricultural purposes, though, the Tzolk'in calendar was useless.

The Maya astronomers knew this. After all they knew the exact orbital data of the Earth-with inexplicable precision. They had measured the exact length of our year to exactly 365.242129 days. That number is more precise than our own calendar! Just for comparison:

There are always decimal places behind the point. We compensate for the inaccuracy in our calendar by adding an extra day every four years-what we call leap years. That's when those poor souls who are born on February 29th can finally celebrate their birthdays again! The Maya did it differently: They added an extra 13 days every 52 years and, with a number of other diverse tricks, managed to create the most precise calendar in the ancient world.

4.5. Three Maya calendar wheels. For clarity, names have been added next to the Maya words. Authors own image.

To the two cogwheels that represent the Tzolk'in year of 260 days, we must now add a third, larger cogwheel with 365 teeth. The Maya called their 365-day calendar Haab. Now we do the same thing as before, this time with three cogwheels. This time we draw a red mark on all three wheels at the zero position. How long will it take until all three cogwheels get back to their starting positions? (To simplify the process, I have added names next to the Maya words in image 4.5 shown on page 149.)

There are 18,980 teeth or days. Put another way, the 365-toothed wheel has turned 52 times; the 260-day wheel has turned 73 times. For the Maya, this meant 52 earthly years were equivalent to 73 god years. The Maya researchers even have a term for this period: a calendar round.

The Maya calculated with much greater calendar numbers than the 18,980 days of the calendar round. There are calendar calculations of 23,040,000,000 days or 64,109,589 years. Some inscriptions even extend 400 million years into the past. How was this possible with a calendar round of only 18,980 days? The solution is a fourth, even bigger cogwheel, which Maya researchers call the "long count." These four cogwheels begin in a start phase marked with the ominous glyphs "4 ahau 8 cumhu." The beginning of the Mayan calendar. But when in the dark mists of time did 4 ahau 8 cumhu take place? When did the Maya calendar start-in terms of our calendar, that is?

This is a question that has caused generations of historians many a sleepless night! On the basis of the religious festivals celebrated after the Spanish conquest, it was possible to count back. In the end, the experts agreed on a date: August 13, 3114 BC. This date was the definitive beginning of the Mayan calendar.

So far, so good. But why had the Mayans started their calendar on August 13, 3114 BC? Strictly speaking, according to accepted thinking, the Maya didn't even exist back then. In other words, the start date is older than the people themselves. Every culture has or had its own calendar, and the date on which it begins always marks some incredibly important event. For the Christians, it is the birth of Christ. That's where the counting starts. For the Muslims, it is the day on which Mohammed moved from Mecca to Medina (622 AD). The Jewish calendar begins with the creation of the world, 5770 years ago (3761 Bc). So what happened to the forefathers of the Maya that was so unspeakably important that it caused them to start their calendar on August 13, 3114 Bc?

The Maya have handed down the story in their legends, recorded for posterity in the Book of the Jaguar Priests. It is one of the socalled "Chilam Balam" books that were first written after the Spanish conquest. Luckily, the Spaniards didn't quite manage to wipe out every single one of the priests. A few managed to flee. Holed up in remote hiding places, they wrote down their ancient knowledge on the new paper. This was how the Chilam Balam books came about. You can read for yourself: "They descended from the street of the stars.. .they spoke the magic tongue of of the stars of heaven.... Yea, their sign is our certainty that they came from heaven.... And when they return, the thirteen gods and the nine gods, they will reorder what they once created."23

In Chapter 3, I talked about language, its meaning, and how it has developed and changed. In this quote from the Book of the Jaguar Priests it must be obvious to even the most ignorant layman that the word heaven used here is a synonym for the term space.

From an earthly point of view-in other words, in terms of sowing and harvesting-the monumental Maya cycles made no sense at all. They did in the minds of the Maya. After 37,960 days, for example, the gods started their journey to their great resting place. Applying statements such as these to the Quetzal Serpent (that is, spacecraft) may well make sense, but it makes no sense at all if the quetzal serpent is merely a reference to the quetzal bird.

'he Return of Bolon Yokte