February news

Feb news

Total Clips: 63

	Date	Outlet
Maya discovery may change Doomsday date	05/11/2012	WPRI-TV - Online
No hint of 'world end' in Mayan calendar	05/11/2012	World News Australia - Online
Scientists find ancient Mayan astronomy records, with hint the world won't truly end this year	05/11/2012	Washington Post - Online
Mayans never thought the world would end in 2012, new research shows	05/11/2012	Toronto Star - Online
Oldest known Mayan astronomical tables found	05/11/2012	The Portland Press Herald
Oldest Mayan calendar found	05/11/2012	Sify.com
No hint of 'dooms day' in Mayan calendar	05/11/2012	Qatar Tribune - Online
Earliest Maya calendar shows no end	05/11/2012	News24
Newly discovered Mayan calendar goes way past 2012	05/11/2012	News Press - Online
Re: Ancient Mayan worksh...	05/11/2012	Monroe Talks
The Mayans reveal their darkest mysteries: New excavation reveals secrets of their calendar - including black-clad figures and symbols never seen before	05/11/2012	Mail on Sunday - Online
Newfound Mayan calendar goes far past 12	05/11/2012	Journal Gazette - Online, The
Maya Painting At Xultun, Guatemala: Glyphs Describe Mayan Calendar But Not End Of World (PHOTOS)	05/11/2012	Huffington Post, The
[05/10] Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/11/2012	FindLaw: Legal News and Commentary
Lo más destacado del ejemplar de Science del 11 de mayo	05/11/2012	EurekAlert!
Workshop for Mayan astronomers discovered	05/11/2012	Detroit News - Online
We're all going to die! Oh wait	05/11/2012	Daily Telegraph Australia
Ancient Mayan calendar notes go beyond 2012	05/11/2012	Daily Herald - Online, The
Mayans never thought the world would end in 2012, new research shows.	05/11/2012	Canadiancontent.net
'Oldest Mayan calendar offers no hint of world's end'	05/11/2012	Buenos AiresNews.net
IT'S 2012 AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIEEEE- Oh, wait	05/11/2012	Brisbane Courier-Mail
Ancient Mayan astronomer's workshop found	05/11/2012	Berkshire Eagle
Archaeologists find ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers in northeastern Guatemala	05/11/2012	Artdaily
Earliest Mayan calendar shows no hint of 'world end' - Yahoo! News UK	05/10/2012	Yahoo! UK and Ireland
Earliest Mayan calendar shows no hint of 'world end'	05/10/2012	Yahoo! News
New Orleans Local News, Weather, Sports, Investigations Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/10/2012	WVUE-TV - Online
WTRF 7 News Sports Weather - Wheeling SteubenvilleAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/10/2012	WTRF-TV - Online
New York News \| New York Breaking News \| NYC HeadlinesAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/10/2012	WNYW-TV - Online
Scientists find ancient Mayan astronomy records, with hint the world won't truly end this year	05/10/2012	Winnipeg Free Press - Online, The
Boston News, Weather, Sports \| FOX 25 \| MyFoxBostonAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/10/2012	WFXT-TV - Online
Chicago News and Weather \| FOX Chicago NewsAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/10/2012	WFLD-TV - Online
Oldest Mayan Calendar Revealed	05/10/2012	Wall Street Journal - Online
New Mayan Discovery: The World Isn't Ending!	05/10/2012	TheDailyBeast.com
Ancient Time: Earliest Mayan Astronomical Calendar Unearthed in Guatemala Ruins	05/10/2012	Scientific American - Online
Inscriptions Found On Walls of a Maya Dwelling Reflect Calendar Reaching Well Beyond 2012	05/10/2012	ScienceDaily
Mural Found On Walls a First for a Maya Dwelling; Painted Numbers Reflect Calendar Reaching Well Beyond 2012	05/10/2012	ScienceDaily
Quincy Herald-Whig \| Illinois & Missouri News, SportsAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/10/2012	Quincy Herald-Whig - Online
Ancient Mayan workshop for...	05/10/2012	Omaha World-Herald - Online
Earliest Mayan calendar shows no hint of 'world end'	05/10/2012	National Post - Online
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered- Sci/Tech News - MyNorthwest.com	05/10/2012	MyNorthwest.com
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered \| Long Island Press	05/10/2012	Long Island Press - Online
Minneapolis News and Weather KMSP FOX 9Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/10/2012	KMSP-TV - Online
Dallas News \| myFOXdfw.comAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/10/2012	KDFW-TV - Online
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers shows calendar doesn't end at 2012 - Peoria, IL - pjstar.com	05/10/2012	Journal Star - Online
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers shows calendar doesn't end at 2012	05/10/2012	Journal Star - Online
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200	05/10/2012	Jakarta Post
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/10/2012	Inside Scoop SF
No hint of 'world end' in earliest Mayan calendar	05/10/2012	Gulf Times
New Mayan calendar discovered: world won't end in 2012	05/10/2012	GlobalPost.com
Mayan Astronomy Workshop Discovered	05/10/2012	Fox News Latino
Artwork found on walls a first for a Maya dwelling	05/10/2012	EurekAlert!
Earliest Known Mayan Calendar Goes Beyond 2012	05/10/2012	Epoch Times - Online
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered \| Deseret News	05/10/2012	Deseret News - Online
Archaeologists discover Mayan astronomers' workshop	05/10/2012	Charleston Daily Mail - Online
Mayan workshop for astronomers found; appears to debunk 2012 scare	05/10/2012	Caribbean Business - Online
Earliest Known Mayan Calendar Found in Guatemalan House	05/10/2012	Bloomberg News - Online
Earliest Mayan Calendar Found in Guatemala House	05/10/2012	Bloomberg Businessweek - Online
Mayan calendar offers no doomsday hint	05/10/2012	Australian, The - Online
Relax - even the Maya didn't believe the world will end in 2012. Here's proof	05/10/2012	Australian IT
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered	05/10/2012	AOL News
Good news! National Geographic says Mayan calendar goes well beyond Dec. 21, 2012	05/10/2012	al.com
Wait, the Mayans said 8012, not 2012	05/10/2012	AdelaideNow
The amazing Maya	05/07/2012	philly.com


Maya discovery may change Doomsday date 05/11/2012 WPRI-TV - Online	Return to Top
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 'It's really a wonderful surprise' Updated: Thursday, 10 May 2012, 4:18 PM EDT Published : Thursday, 10 May 2012, 4:16 PM EDT NEW YORK (AP) — Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." ___

No hint of 'world end' in Mayan calendar 05/11/2012 World News Australia - Online	Return to Top
The SBS MP3 Player requires the Adobe Flash 8 Plugin. You can get Flash from here... No hint of 'world end' in earliest Mayan calendar The hieroglyphs date back to the ninth century, making them hundreds of years older than the calendars in the Maya Codices, which were recorded in bark-paper books from 1300 to 1521. (Getty) The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said. The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said. Rather, the painted room in the residential complex at Xultun was likely the place where the town scribe kept records, scrawling computations on the walls in an effort to find "harmony between sky events and sacred rituals," said the study in the journal Science. The hieroglyphs date back to the ninth century, making them hundreds of years older than the calendars in the Maya Codices, which were recorded in bark-paper books from 1300 to 1521. Some appear to be the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, said archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation. According to Saturno, the writing looks like someone's attempt to sort out a very long math problem, as if on a blackboard. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," Saturno said. "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," he added. "We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." Furthermore, there is no sign that the much-hyped myth that the Mayan calendar would end in 2012, and with it the world, has any bearing in reality. All that ended in 2012 was one of its calendar cycles, said co-author Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," said Aveni. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over," he added. "The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years -- and in places other than books -- before they recorded them in the Codices." Even though the 12-square mile (31-square kilometer) site of Xultun, deep in a rainforest where tens of thousands of people once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago, the house structure where the calendar is drawn on the walls was spotted in 2010. Researchers say careful excavations have revealed that the paintings inside -- including some of human figures wearing feather head-dresses -- show the first examples of Mayan art on a house interior. "It's weird that the Xultun finds exist at all," Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter (three feet) below the surface." Follow us:

Scientists find ancient Mayan astronomy records, with hint the world won't truly end this year 05/11/2012 Washington Post - Online	Return to Top
NEW YORK — Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. “Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?” observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. “You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on.” Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. “'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion,” he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were “geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society,” Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. “It's really a wonderful surprise,” said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, “we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things,” Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. “It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it” in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. “This is an intriguing start for this discovery.” Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Mayans never thought the world would end in 2012, new research shows 05/11/2012 Toronto Star - Online Malcolm Ritter Associated Press	Return to Top
NEW YORK—Archeologists working in Guatemala have found a small room amid Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has received attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say the calendar makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: the calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years, meaning it could extend well beyond 2012. “Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?” said Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. “You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on.” The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Until now, the earliest known examples dated from about 600 years ago, though scientists knew the Maya must have been keeping records much earlier. Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rainforest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals and could have been used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good the year's crops would be, he said. “What you have here is astronomy driven by religion,” he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were “geeks . . . who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society,” Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. “It's really a wonderful surprise,” said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, “we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things,” Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing.

Oldest known Mayan astronomical tables found 05/11/2012 The Portland Press Herald	Return to Top
MaineToday.com Obituaries Maine Obituaries - Press Herald 1:00 AM Oldest known Mayan astronomical tables found Experts say the Mayan calendar actually does not predict the end of the world this December. The Associated Press NEW YORK - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in today's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. Maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Were you interviewed for this story? If so, please fill out our accuracy form Send Question/Comment to the Publisher

Oldest Mayan calendar found 05/11/2012 Sify.com	Return to Top
Oldest Mayan calendar found Source : Last Updated: Fri, May 11, 2012 12:00 hrs A vast city built by the ancient Maya and uncovered almost a century ago is finally beginning to yield its secrets. Excavating for the first time in the sprawling complex of Xultun in Guatemala's Peten region, archaeologists have discovered a structure that contains what appears to be a work space for the town's scribe, its walls adorned with unique paintings - one depicting a lineup of men in black uniforms - and hundreds of scrawled numbers. Many are calculations relating to the Maya calendar. One wall of the structure, thought to be a house, is covered with tiny, millimeter-thick, red and black glyphs unlike any seen before at other Maya sites. Some appear to represent the various calendrical cycles charted by the Maya - the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, reported archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," Saturno said. "It's like an episode of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard." The project scientists say that despite popular belief, there is no sign that the Maya calendar - or the world - was to end in the year 2012, just one of its calendar cycles. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," said Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, a coauthor of the paper. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over." The mural represents the first Maya art to be found on the walls of a house. "There are tiny glyphs all over the wall, bars and dots representing columns of numbers. It's the kind of thing that only appears in one place - the Dresden Codex, which the Maya wrote many centuries later. We've never seen anything like it," said David Stuart, Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing at the University of Texas-Austin, who deciphered the glyphs. The vegetation-covered structure was first spotted in 2010 by Saturno's student Max Chamberlain, who was following looters' trenches to explore the site of Xultun, hidden in the remote rain forest of the Peten. Then, supported by a series of grants from the National Geographic Society, Saturno and his team launched an organized exploration and excavation of the house, working urgently to beat the region's rainy seasons, which threatened to erase what time had so far preserved. Xultun, a 12-square-mile site where tens of thousands once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago by a Guatemalan worker and roughly mapped in the 1920s by Sylvanus Morley, who named the site "Xultun" - "end stone." Scientists from Harvard University mapped more of the site in the 1970s. The house discovered by Saturno's team was numbered 54 of 56 structures counted and mapped at that time. Thousands at Xultun remain uncounted. The team's excavations reveal that monumental construction at Xultun began in the first centuries B.C. The site thrived until the end of the Classic Maya period; the site's last carved monument dates to around 890 A.D. Xultun stood only about five miles from San Bartolo, where in 2001 Saturno found rare, extensive murals painted on the walls of a ritual structure by the ancient Maya. "It's weird that the Xultun finds exist at all," Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter below the surface." The house contains three intact walls, each telling its own story to researchers - and posing its own mysteries: The north wall lies straight ahead as one enters the room. An off-center niche in the wall features a painting of a seated king, wearing blue feathers. A long rod made of bone mounted on the wall allowed a curtain to be pulled across the king's portrait, hiding it and revealing a well-preserved painting of a man whose image is wrapped around the wall; he is depicted in vibrant orange and holds a pen. Maya glyphs near his face call him "Younger Brother Obsidian," a curious title seldom seen in Maya text. Based on other Maya sites, Saturno theorizes he could be the son or younger brother of the king and possibly the artist-scribe who lived in the house. "The portrait of the king implies a relationship between whoever lived in this space and the royal family," Saturno said. Four long numbers on the wall representing one-third of a million to 2.5 million days likely bring together all of the astronomical cycles - such as those of Mars, Venus and the lunar eclipses - that the Maya thought important, dates that stretch some 7,000 years into the future. This is the first place Maya archaeologists have found that seems to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. Another number scratched into the plaster surface likely records the date - 813 A.D., a time when the Maya world had begun to collapse. The west wall: Three male figures loom on this wall, all of them seated and painted in black, wearing only white loincloths, medallions around their necks and identical single-feathered, miter-style head dresses. "We haven't seen uniform head dresses like that anywhere before," Saturno said. "It's clearly a costume of some kind." One of the figures is particularly burly, "like a sumo wrestler," and he is labeled "Older Brother Obsidian." Another is labelled as a youth. The east wall: Although badly eroded, another black-painted human figure and remnants of others can be seen. But the wall is dominated by numerical figures, including columns of numbers representing counting and calendrical calculations. Some of the numbers track the phases of the moon; others try to reconcile lunar periods with the solar calendar. "Skywatching like this was a tool for predicting eclipses," Saturno said. One well-preserved section contains numerical notes painted in red that appear to be corrections to more formal calculations appearing alongside them. "The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years - and in places other than books - before they recorded them in the Codices," Aveni said. The scientists say the symbols reflect a certain world view. "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," Saturno said. "We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset," Saturno added. The discovery is reported in National Geographic magazine and in the journal Science. (ANI)

No hint of 'dooms day' in Mayan calendar 05/11/2012 Qatar Tribune - Online	Return to Top
Friday, May 11 2012 No hint of ‘dooms day' in Mayan calendar AFP WASHINGTON THE earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said on Thursday. Rather, the painted room in the residential complex at Xultun was likely the place where the town scribe kept records, scrawling computations on the walls in an effort to find “harmony between sky events and sacred rituals,” said the study in the journal Science. The hieroglyphs date back to the ninth century, making them hundreds of years older than the calendars in the Maya Codices, which were recorded in bark-paper books from 1300 to 1521. Some appear to be the 365- day solar calendar, the 584- day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, said archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation. According to Saturno, the writing looks like someone's attempt to sort out a very long math problem, as if on a blackboard. “For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community,” Saturno said. “The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this,” he added. “We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset.” Furthermore, there is no sign that the much-hyped myth that the Mayan calendar would end in 2012, and with it the world, has any bearing in reality. All that ended in 2012 was one of its calendar cycles, said co-author Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University. “It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000,” said Aveni. “The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over,” he added. “The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years — and in places other than books — before they recorded them in the Codices.” Even though the 31-square kilometer site of Xultun, deep in a rainforest where tens of thousands of people once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago, the house structure where the calendar is drawn on the walls was spotted in 2010. Researchers say careful excavations have revealed that the paintings inside — including some of human figures wearing feather head-dresses — show the first examples of Mayan art on a house interior. “It's weird that the Xultun finds exist at all,” Saturno said. “Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter below the surface.”

Earliest Maya calendar shows no end 05/11/2012 News24	Return to Top
The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent. Washington - The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said on Thursday. Rather, the painted room in the residential complex at Xultun was probably between sky events and sacred rituals," said the study in the journal Science. The hieroglyphs date back to the ninth century, making them hundreds of years older than the calendars in the Maya Codices, which were recorded in bark-paper books from 1300 to 1521. Some appear to be the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, said archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation. According to Saturno, the writing looks like someone's attempt to sort out a very long math problem, as if on a blackboard. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," Saturno said. "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7 000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," he added. "We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." Furthermore, there is no sign that the much-hyped myth that the Mayan calendar would end in 2012, and with it the world, has any bearing in reality. All that ended in 2012 was one of its calendar cycles, said co-author Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120 000s to 130 000," said Aveni. "The car gets a step closer to the junk yard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over," he added. "The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years - and in places other than books - before they recorded them in the Codices." Even though the 31km² site of Xultun, deep in a rainforest where tens of thousands of people once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago, the house structure where the calendar is drawn on the walls was spotted in 2010. Researchers say careful excavations have revealed that the paintings inside - including some of human figures wearing feather head-dresses - show the first examples of Mayan art on a house interior. "It's weird that the Xultun finds exist at all," Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a metre below the surface."

Newly discovered Mayan calendar goes way past 2012 05/11/2012 News Press - Online	Return to Top
Newly discovered Mayan calendar goes way past 2012 8:48 PM, May. 10, 2012 \| In this undated photo made available by National Geographic, conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Maya house that dates to the 9th century A.D. in the Maya city Zultun in northeastern Guatemala. Archaeologists have found the small room where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. Anthony Aveni of Colgate University, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, are reporting the discovery in the Friday, May 11, 2012 issue of the journal Science. / AP Written by The Associated Press Filed Under Nation & World This undated image made available by National Geographic shows four long numbers on the north wall of a ruined house related to the Maya calendar and computations about the moon, sun and possibly Venus and Mars; the dates stretch some 7,000 years into the future. Archaeologists have found the small room where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. Anthony Aveni of Colgate University, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, are reporting the discovery in the Friday, May 11, 2012 issue of the journal Science. / AP More NEW YORK Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins in Guatemala where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were an important element to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Mr. Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, will report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it is clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Mr. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It isn't clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. "It is really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Mr. Martin said. More In Nation & World Email this article

Re: Ancient Mayan worksh... 05/11/2012 Monroe Talks	Return to Top
Author Topic: Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered (Read 78 times) 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. Baggins Hero Talker There and back again... NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." Logged

The Mayans reveal their darkest mysteries: New excavation reveals secrets of their calendar - including black-clad figures and symbols never seen before 05/11/2012 Mail on Sunday - Online	Return to Top
The Mayans reveal their darkest mysteries: New excavation reveals secrets of their calendar - including black-clad figures and symbols never seen before Wall covered in calculations relating to Mayan calendar Line-up of men in black uniforms Astrological calculations not fully understood Dates seem to stretch 7,000 years into FUTURE First paintings found on walls in Mayan dwellings Huge city in Guatemala finally reveals its secrets By Rob Waugh PUBLISHED: 13:04 EST, 10 May 2012 \| UPDATED: 13:04 EST, 10 May 2012 A vast city built by the ancient Mayan civilisation and discovered nearly a century ago in modern day Guatemala is finally starting to yield its secrets. Excavating for the first time in the sprawling complex of Xultzn in Guatemala's Peten region, archaeologists have uncovered a structure that contains what appears to be a work space for the town's scribe. Its walls are adorned with unique paintings - one depicting a line-up of men in black uniforms, and hundreds of scrawled numbers - many calculations relating to the Mayan calendar. The painted figure of a man - possibly a scribe - is illuminated in the doorway of the Mayan dwelling, which holds symbols never seen before Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Maya house that dates to the 9th century A.D. A mysterious figure is shown painted on the wall in the foreground Four long numbers on the north wall of the ruined house relate to the Maya calendar and computations about the moon, sun and possibly Venus and Mars; the dates may stretch some 7,000 years into the future. These are the first calculations Maya archaeologists have found that seem to tabulate all of these cycles in this way Mayan temples in Guatemala: Researchers have found walls adorned with unique paintings - one depicting a line-up of men in black uniforms, and hundreds of scrawled numbers - many calculations relating to the Mayan calendar Never-before-seen artwork - the first to be found on walls of a Maya house - adorn the dwelling in the ruined city of Xultún The Mayan sites in Guatemala have been investigated by scientists since the Seventies One wall of the structure, thought to be a house, is covered with tiny, millimetre-thick, red and black glyphs unlike any seen before at other Mayan sites. Some appear to represent the various calendrical cycles charted by the Mayans - the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars. Four long numbers on the north wall of the ruined house relate to the Maya calendar and computations about the moon, sun and possibly Venus and Mars; the dates may stretch some 7,000 years into the future. These are the first calculations Maya archaeologists have found that seem to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. Although they all involve common multiples of key calendrical and astronomical cycles, the exact significance of these particular spans of time is not known. Archaeologist William Saturno, of Boston University in the United States who led the exploration and excavation, said: �For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community. More... Most controversial game of all time to be 'reborn' - Carmageddon, where drivers are rewarded for running over pedestrians �It's like an episode of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard.' The scientists say that despite popular belief, there is no sign that the Mayan calendar - or the world - was to end in the year 2012, just one of its calendar cycles. Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, said: �It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000. �The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over.' Archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University carefully uncovers art and writings left by the Maya some 1,200 years ago DO THE MAYANS PREDICT THE WORLD WILL END IN 2012? Incriptions on Mayan tablets found in temples such as Tortuguero refer to 'the end' - and many internet conspiracy theories have predicted our world will be swallowed by a black hole, hit by an asteroid or devoured by ancient gods. But many ethnic Mayans dismiss the apocalyptic predictions as largely a Western idea. Rather than the end of time itself, the inscriptions refer to the start of a new era. The 'apocalypse' refers to the end of a cycle of 5,125 years since the beginning of the Mayan Long Count calendar in 3113 B.C. The paintings represent the first Maya art to be found on the walls of a house. Xultzn, a 12 square mile site where tens of thousands once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago by Guatemalan workers and roughly mapped in the 1920s by Sylvanus Morley, who named the site �Xultzn' - �end stone.' Scientists from Harvard University mapped more of the site in the 1970s. The house discovered by Prof Saturno's team was numbered 54 of 56 structures counted and mapped at that time. Thousands at Xultzn remain uncounted. The team's excavations reveal that monumental construction at Xultzn began in the first centuries B.C. The site thrived until the end of the Classic Maya period; the site's last carved monument dates to around 890 A.D. Prof Saturno saidd: �It's weird that the Xultzn finds exist at all. Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter below the surface.' Prof Aveni added: �The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years - and in places other than books - before they recorded them in the Codices.' The findings were reported in National Geographic magazine and in the journal Science. Here's what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. The comments below have not been moderated. View all Mumbo Jumbo the lot of it, Just like the Bible. - Genbac, Shropshire, 12/05/11 0:26 And your theory is....? - lee, kyoto, japan, 11/5/2012 05:25 Click to rate Rating (0)

Newfound Mayan calendar goes far past 12 05/11/2012 Journal Gazette - Online, The	Return to Top
You choose, we deliver If you are interested in this story, you might be interested in others from The Journal Gazette. Go to www.journalgazette.net/newsletter and pick the subjects you care most about. We'll deliver your customized daily news report at 3 a.m. Fort Wayne time, right to your email. Science Associated Press Artwork, the first to be found on walls of a Maya house, adorn a dwelling in the ruined city of Xultun in northeast Guatemala. Published: May 11, 2012 3:00 a.m. Newfound Mayan calendar goes far past ’12 MALCOLM RITTER Associated Press NEW YORK _ Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society’s intricate calendar about 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now, the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. “Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?” asked Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. “You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on.” Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in today’s issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6 feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rainforest at Xultun in northeast Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it’s clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such recordkeeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year’s crops would be, he said. “What you have here is astronomy driven by religion.” On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It’s not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were “geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society,” Aveni suggested. While the results of the scribes’ work were known from carvings on monuments, “we’ve never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things,” Martin said. Stock Sponsor

Maya Painting At Xultun, Guatemala: Glyphs Describe Mayan Calendar But Not End Of World (PHOTOS) 05/11/2012 Huffington Post, The David Freeman	Return to Top
"For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community. It's like an episode of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard." That's Boston University archaeologist William Saturno talking about a new excavation of an ancient Mayan structure hidden in a rain forest in Guatemala's Peten region, according to a written statement released by the National Geographic Society. The society supported the excavation, which Saturno led. The walls of the structure, believed to be a house, are adorned with unique red and black glyphs unlike those seen at other Maya sites, according to the statement. "We've never seen anything like it," David Stuart, professor of Mesoamerican art and writing at the University of Texas-Austin, said in the statement. He deciphered the glyphs. Some of the glyphs relate to various Mayan calendars. But guess what: there's no sign from the glyphs that the Mayans believed the world would end in 2012--only that the world would begin a new cycle. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," Anthony F. Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, said in the statement. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over." The structure is part of a region called Xultun, the largest Mayan site yet to be fully investigated by archaeologists. It was first spotted in 2010, according to the statement. The discovery of the glyphs is reported in the June issue of "National Geographic" and in the May 11 issue of the journal "Science." "Younger Brother Obsidian," as labeled on the north wall of the Maya city's house by an unknown hand, was painted in the 9th century A.D. Archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University excavates the house in the ruins of the Maya city of Xultún. Younger Brother Obsidian may have been the town scribe. Excavation and preservation of the site were supported by the National Geographic Society. Photo by Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic Trees grow atop a newly discovered mound over a house built by the ancient Maya that contains the rendering of an ancient figure, possibly the town scribe. The house sits at the edge of the ancient site of Xultún in Guatemala, a city that once housed tens of thousands of people. Excavation and preservation of the site were supported by the National Geographic Society. Photo by Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic Three male figures, seated and painted in black. The men, wearing only white loincloths and medallions around their necks and a head dress bearing another medallion and a single feather, were uncovered on the ruined house's west wall. The painting recreates the design and colors of the original Maya mural. Excavation and preservation of the site were supported by the National Geographic Society. Painting by Heather Hurst A Maya king, seated and wearing an elaborate head dress of blue feathers, adorns the north wall of the ruined house discovered at the Maya site of Xultún. An attendant, at right, leans out from behind the king's head dress. The painting by artist Heather Hurst recreates the design and colors of the original Maya artwork at the site. The excavation and preservation of the site were supported by the National Geographic Society. Painting by Heather Hurst A vibrant orange figure, kneeling in front of the king on the ruined house's north wall, is labeled "Younger Brother Obsidian," a curious title seldom seen in Maya text. The man is holding a writing instrument, which may indicate he was a scribe. The painting recreates the design and colors of the figure in the original Maya mural. Excavation and preservation of the site were supported by the National Geographic Society. Painting by Heather Hurst Four long numbers on the north wall of the ruined house relate to the Maya calendar and computations about the moon, sun and possibly Venus and Mars; the dates may stretch some 7,000 years into the future. These are the first calculations Maya archaeologists have found that seem to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. Although they all involve common multiples of key calendrical and astronomical cycles, the exact significance of these particular spans of time is not known. Illustration by William Saturno and David Stuart © 2012 National Geographic The painted figure of a man -- possibly a scribe who once lived in the house built by the ancient Maya -- is illuminated through a doorway to the dwelling, in northeastern Guatemala. The structure represents the first Maya house found to contain artwork on its walls. The research is supported by the National Geographic Society. Photo by Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic Conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Maya house that dates to the 9th century A.D. The figure of a man who may have been the town scribe appears on the wall to her left. Excavation and preservation of the site were supported by the National Geographic Society. Photo by Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic Never-before-seen artwork -- the first to be found on walls of a Maya house -- adorn the dwelling in the ruined city of Xultún. The figure at left is one of three men on the house's west wall who are painted in black and wear identical costumes. Excavation and preservation of the site were supported by the National Geographic Society. Photo by Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic Archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University carefully uncovers art and writings left by the Maya some 1,200 years ago. The art and other symbols on the walls may have been records kept by a scribe, Saturno theorizes. Saturno's excavation and documentation of the house were supported by the National Geographic Society. Photo by Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic Related on HuffPost: FOLLOW SCIENCE

[05/10] Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/11/2012 FindLaw: Legal News and Commentary	Return to Top
Thursday, May 10, 2012 Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered MALCOLM RITTER AP Science Writer NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "`What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." ---

Lo más destacado del ejemplar de Science del 11 de mayo 05/11/2012 EurekAlert!	Return to Top
Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-7088 American Association for the Advancement of Science Lo más destacado del ejemplar de Science del 11 de mayo El Calendario Astronómico Maya Más Antiguo del que se Tenga Conocimiento: Una habitación pintada en un templo Maya en Guatemala muestra récords numéricos de ciclos lunares y posiblemente planetarios, reportan investigadores. Los jeroglíficos son del siglo IX, haciendo a este calendario varios siglos más antiguo que aquellos de los Códices Mayas, los cuales fueron escritos en libros de papel de cortezas. Estos libros datan del periodo Postclásico tardío, pero precursores del periodo clásico no habían sido encontrados hasta ahora. William Saturno y colegas describen la habitación, la cual es parte de un complejo residencial más grande en Xultun, Guatemala y parece tener cálculos similares en dos de sus paredes. Gran parte del cuarto ha sido dañado por saqueadores, pero varias figuras humanas pintadas y varios jeroglíficos negros y rojos han sido conservados. La pared del este contiene cálculos en relación con el ciclo lunar. Los cálculos en la pared norte son más enigmáticos pero podrían relacionarse con Marte, Mercurio y posiblemente Venus. Los autores notan que una meta de los encargados del calendario maya, deducida a partir de estudios de los códices, era el buscar la armonía entre los eventos celestes y los rituales sagrados. Ellos especulan que las pinturas de Xultun podrían haberse utilizado para propósitos similares. Artículo #13: "Ancient Maya Astronomical Tables from Xultun, Guatemala," por W.A. Saturno; F. Rossi de Boston University en Boston, MA; D. Stuart de University of Texas, Austin en Austin, TX; A.F. Aveni de Colgate University en Hamilton, NY. El Planeta que Kepler No Vio: Un análisis de datos provistos por la nave espacial Kepler, la cual ha estado monitoreando la brillantez de aproximadamente 150,000 estrellas y evidencia de planetas pasando frente a ellos, ha resultado en el descubrimiento de al menos un planeta más que no había sido identificado originalmente por el Equipo Kepler. David Nesvomy y colegas habían estado monitoreando el tránsito, o pasaje alrededor de una estrella, de un posible planeta identificado por Kepler, conocido como KOI-872, cuando notaron ciertas variaciones en su tiempo de tránsito. Dichas variaciones en los tiempos de tránsito, o TTVs (por sus siglas en inglés), son con frecuencia causadas por perturbaciones gravitacionales que se originan desde otro cercano planeta. Entonces, con base en las TTVs de KOI-872, Nesvomy y los otros investigadores argumentan que otro planeta está también orbitando la estrella principal cada 57 días, aunque no pasa frente a la estrella en relación al ojo de Kepler. Los investigadores también sugieren la presencia de un tercer planeta, aproximadamente 1.7 veces la masa de la Tierra, orbitando esa misma estrella principal cada 6.8 días aunque no pueden aún confirmar su existencia. Las órbitas de estos dos planetas confirmados uno identificado por el Equipo Kepler y el otro notado por estos investigadores son reminiscentes de la disposición ordenada de las órbitas en nuestro sistema solar, según Nesvomy y sus colegas. Un artículo Perspective por parte de Norman Murray explica estos descubrimientos con mayor detalle. Artículo #19: "The Detection and Characterization of a Non-Transiting Planet by Transit Timing Variations," por D. Nesvorný de Southwest Research Institute en Boulder, CO; D.M. Kipping de Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics en Cambridge, MA; L.A. Buchhave de University of Copenhagen en Copenhagen, Dinamarca; L.A. Buchhave de Natural History Museum of Denmark en Copenhagen, Dinamarca; G.Á. Bakos; J. Hartman de Princeton University en Princeton, NJ; A.R. Schmitt de Citizen Science en Boston, MA. Artículo #20: "Evidence of Things Not Seen," por N.W. Murray at University of Toronto en Toronto, ON, Canadá. Alelos Más Raros Desde el Boom de la Población Humana: El número de raras variantes de genes en la población humana se ha incrementado conforme el tamaño de la población ha explotado durante los últimos 10,000 años, reportan investigadores. Los hallazgos tienen implicaciones para modelos genéticos que estimulan cambios en la población humana, dado que estos modelos son típicamente basados en un número relativamente pequeño de genomas totalmente secuenciados. Es bien sabido que la población humana se ha expandido al menos en tres órdenes de magnitud en las pasadas 400 generaciones, con las cosas realmente despegando en los últimos 2,000 años. Pero, el efecto de ese crecimiento en nuestros genomas ha sido menos claro. Utilizando datos genómicos humanos, Alon Keinan y Andrew Clark examinaron los efectos del crecimiento de la población en nuestra habilidad para detectar raras variantes genéticas. Ellos descubrieron que el número de variantes raras dentro del genoma humano es mucho mayor que lo vaticinado por modelos genéticos de población que no tomaron en cuenta este rápido ritmo de crecimiento de población, o como se determinó a partir de estudios empíricos con muestras de tamaño relativamente pequeño. En cambio, los estudios de poblaciones más grandes, los cuales incorporan esta alta tasa de crecimiento, son mejores en identificar frecuencias de mutación. Artículo #16: "Recent Explosive Human Population Growth Has Resulted in an Excess of Rare Genetic Variants," por A. Keinan; A.G. Clark de Cornell University en Ítaca, NY. Una Interacción Solar Más Débil, Más Lenta: El sol está moviéndose a través del espacio interestelar más lentamente que lo que se pensaba anteriormente, y parece tener una interacción más débil con el resto de la galaxia, reporta un nuevo estudio. Nuestro sistema solar se mueve rápidamente a través del espacio, viajando dentro de una burbuja de viento solar y campo magnético llamada la heliósfera. El límite de la heliósfera, en donde el viento solar interactúa con el resto de la galaxia, marca la orilla del sistema solar. Utilizando nuevas mediciones del Explorador de la Frontera Interestelar de NASA, una pequeña nave espacial que está generando remotamente imágenes de la naturaleza de interacciones de partículas en la orilla de nuestro sistema solar, David McComas y colegas confirman que el movimiento relativo del Sol con respecto al medio interestelar es más lento y en una dirección un tanto distinta. Además, a esta velocidad más lenta, la interacción del Sol con la heliósfera es más débil que lo que los científicos habían creído en el pasado, como es evidenciado por la falta de lo que los astrónomos llaman "arco de choque". Un arco de choque es la onda de choque firme que se forma cuando el medio interestelar abruptamente desacelera antes de chocar con la heliósfera, como cuando un jet supersónico produce un fuerte estruendo sónico conforme viaja a través del aire. El descubrimiento cuestiona la posición sostenida durante largo tiempo de que un arco de choque interestelar existe a contracorriente de la heliósfera, y podría tener implicaciones sobre cuánta radiación (en la forma de rayos cósmicos galácticos) entra a nuestro sistema solar. Artículo #18: "The Heliosphere's Interstellar Interaction: No Bow Shock," por D.J. McComas de Southwest Research Institute en San Antonio, TX; D.J. McComas de University of Texas at San Antonio en San Antonio, TX; D. Alexashov; V. Izmodenov de Moscow State University en Moscú, Rusia; D. Alexashov; V. Izmodenov de Russian Academy of Sciences en Moscú, Rusia; M. Bzowski de Polish Academy of Sciences en Varsovia, Polonia; H. Fahr de University of Bonn en Bonn, Alemania; J. Heerikhuisen; N. Pogorelov; G.P. Zank de University of Alabama at Huntsville en Huntsville, Alabama; M.A. Lee; E. Möbius; N.A. Schwadron de University of New Hampshire en Durham, NH; E. Möbius de Los Alamos National Laboratory en Los Alamos, NM. ###

Workshop for Mayan astronomers discovered 05/11/2012 Detroit News - Online Malcolm Ritter	Return to Top
Conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Maya building that dates to the ninth century in Xultun, Guatemala. Astronomical records were found there. (Tyrone Turner / National Geographic) New York— Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" asked Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in today's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6 feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," Aveni said. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

We're all going to die! Oh wait 05/11/2012 Daily Telegraph Australia	Return to Top
thetelegraph.com.au Last Updated: May 11, 2012 Weather: Sydney 14°C - 26°C . Sunny periods. IN a jungle one day, in a land far away, a man found a house. In the house there was a room. In the room there were some numbers... and that's about as close to story time as you're going to get here. Including any fantasy that the world is going to end in 2012. A new find at the Guatemalan Maya site XultÚn has all but put paid to the myth that the Mayan calendar runs out on December 21, 2012. In a recently excavated house, archaeologists have found one wall scrawled with hundreds of numbers, which the team says relate to the Mayan calendar. The tiny, millimetre-thick, red and black glyphs are "unlike any seen before" at other Maya sites. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation, said. "It's like an episode of TV's Big Bang Theory, a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard." The only other time the glyphs have been spotted is in the Dresden Codex, a book famed for its astrological accuracy which was written several hundred years after the words were painted on the walls of the XultÚn complex. Among the glyphs, the team spotted references to the four Maya calenders - the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars. Four long numbers on the wall represent 300,000-2.5 million days which seem to bring together all of the astronomical cycles the Maya thought important. Mayan wall In a recently excavated house, archaeologists found one wall with scrawled hundreds of numbers, which the team says relate to the Mayan calendar. Picture: W Saturno Source: news.com.au And here's the sad bit for the conspiracy theorists - the dates stretch some 7000 years into the future. XultÚn is the first place Maya archaeologists have found that seems to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. And no, the site isn't 7000 years old - a number scratched into the plaster likely records the date at 813 A.D., just as the Maya world began to collapse. Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, says all the signs point to the much less Hollywood belief held by academia that 2012 signals the end of just one of the ancient civilisation's calendar cycles. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," Prof Aveni said. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over." The complex the house sits in was discovered about 100 years ago and was home to tens of thousands, the team said. Its discoverer, Sylvanus Morley, named the site XultÚn, meaning "end stone". It wasn't mapped until the 1970s and the house in which the glyphs were found was number 54 of the 56 verified. Remarkably, it sat just a metre below the surface, a fact which helped Prof Saturno's student Max Chamberlain discover it by following looter's tunnels in 2010. "It's weird that the XultÚn finds exist at all," Prof Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a metre below the surface." Bah. Back to the drawing board, Hollywood. 8012 just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Ancient Mayan calendar notes go beyond 2012 05/11/2012 Daily Herald - Online, The Associated Press	Return to Top
A conservator cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a house that dates to the 9th century A.D. in the Mayan city Zultun in Guatemala. Royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar. Detail of Mayan notes on the north wall of the house. Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in today's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni said. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery."

Mayans never thought the world would end in 2012, new research shows. 05/11/2012 Canadiancontent.net	Return to Top
#11 hour ago Bummer. I was looking forward to the end. NEW YORKArcheologists working in Guatemala have found a small room amid Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the societys intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has received attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say the calendar makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: the calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years, meaning it could extend well beyond 2012. Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year? said Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Until now, the earliest known examples dated from about 600 years ago, though scientists knew the Maya must have been keeping records much earlier. Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Fridays issue of the journal Science. The room is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rainforest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but its clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals and could have been used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good the years crops would be, he said. What you have here is astronomy driven by religion, he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. Its not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were geeks . . . who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society, Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. Its really a wonderful surprise, said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes work were known from carvings on monuments, weve never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things, Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. Re: Mayans never thought the world would end in 2012, new research shows. 19 minutes ago All these predictions are so much nonsense. The other side of the coin for believers in over rides Gods law. There was a statement in the Bible attributed to Christ himself. He said of his return, no one knows the time or the hour, He said he would come like a thief in the night. Basically put, its none of your business when I am coming back. When religious leaders use the second coming predictions as a hold on people, and or when they are using predictions to raise money, this must be a total affront to their core belief system. The faithful never seem to catch on.

'Oldest Mayan calendar offers no hint of world's end' 05/11/2012 Buenos AiresNews.net	Return to Top
The oldest Mayan Calendar found in an ancient Guatemalan house offers no hint of the alleged end of the world Dec 21 this year, researchers said. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has got traction because of doomsday warnings predicting the end of life in December 2012. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years, meaning it could extend well beyond 2012, the journal Science reports. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year," asks Anthony Aveni of the Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on," said Aveni, who co-authored the study with William Saturno of the Boston University, and others, according to the Telegraph. The room is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, researchers said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they thought it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times.

IT'S 2012 AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIEEEE- Oh, wait 05/11/2012 Brisbane Courier-Mail	Return to Top
Count out 7000-year calendar Better luck next time, Armageddon fans And if the world does end? Blame this broken skull IN a jungle one day, in a land far away, a man found a house. In the house there was a room. In the room there were some numbers... and that's about as close to story time as you're going to get here. Including any fantasy that the world is going to end in 2012. A new find at the Guatemalan Maya site XultÚn has all but put paid to the myth that the Mayan calendar runs out on December 21, 2012. In a recently excavated house, archaeologists have found one wall scrawled with hundreds of numbers, which the team says relate to the Mayan calendar. The tiny, millimetre-thick, red and black glyphs are "unlike any seen before" at other Maya sites. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation, said. "It's like an episode of TV's Big Bang Theory, a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard." The only other time the glyphs have been spotted is in the Dresden Codex, a book famed for its astrological accuracy which was written several hundred years after the words were painted on the walls of the XultÚn complex. Among the glyphs, the team spotted references to the four Maya calenders - the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars. Four long numbers on the wall represent 300,000-2.5 million days which seem to bring together all of the astronomical cycles the Maya thought important. Mayan wall In a recently excavated house, archaeologists found one wall with scrawled hundreds of numbers, which the team says relate to the Mayan calendar. Picture: W Saturno Source: news.com.au And here's the sad bit for the conspiracy theorists - the dates stretch some 7000 years into the future. XultÚn is the first place Maya archaeologists have found that seems to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. And no, the site isn't 7000 years old - a number scratched into the plaster likely records the date at 813 A.D., just as the Maya world began to collapse. Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, says all the signs point to the much less Hollywood belief held by academia that 2012 signals the end of just one of the ancient civilisation's calendar cycles. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," Prof Aveni said. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over." The complex the house sits in was discovered about 100 years ago and was home to tens of thousands, the team said. Its discoverer, Sylvanus Morley, named the site XultÚn, meaning "end stone". It wasn't mapped until the 1970s and the house in which the glyphs were found was number 54 of the 56 verified. Remarkably, it sat just a metre below the surface, a fact which helped Prof Saturno's student Max Chamberlain discover it by following looter's tunnels in 2010. "It's weird that the XultÚn finds exist at all," Prof Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a metre below the surface." Bah. Back to the drawing board, Hollywood. 8012 just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Ancient Mayan astronomer's workshop found 05/11/2012 Berkshire Eagle	Return to Top
Click photo to enlarge Artwork, the first to be found on walls of a Maya house, adorns a dwelling in the ruined city of Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. Royal scribes kept track of astronomical records on the walls. NEW YORK (AP) -- Arch aeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations in clude a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in today's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery."

Archaeologists find ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers in northeastern Guatemala 05/11/2012 Artdaily Ignacio Villarreal	Return to Top
Four long numbers on the north wall of a ruined house related to the Maya calendar and computations about the moon, sun and possibly Venus and Mars; the dates stretch some 7,000 years into the future. Archaeologists have found the small room where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. Anthony Aveni of Colgate University, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, are reporting the discovery in the Friday, May 11, 2012 issue of the journal Science. AP Photo/National Geographic, Tyrone Turner. By: Malcolm Ritter, AP Science Writer NEW YORK, (AP).- Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Earliest Mayan calendar shows no hint of 'world end' - Yahoo! News UK 05/10/2012 Yahoo! UK and Ireland	Return to Top
Earliest Mayan calendar shows no hint of 'world end' By AFP \| AFP _ 6 hours ago Related Content View Photo Mayan priests in Guatemala participate in a vigil in 2010 to welcome the end of the Mayan calendar. The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said Thursday The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said Thursday. Rather, the painted room in the residential complex at Xultun was likely the place where the town scribe kept records, scrawling computations on the walls in an effort to find "harmony between sky events and sacred rituals," said the study in the journal Science. The hieroglyphs date back to the ninth century, making them hundreds of years older than the calendars in the Maya Codices, which were recorded in bark-paper books from 1300 to 1521. Some appear to be the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, said archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation. According to Saturno, the writing looks like someone's attempt to sort out a very long math problem, as if on a blackboard. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," Saturno said. "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," he added. "We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." Furthermore, there is no sign that the much-hyped myth that the Mayan calendar would end in 2012, and with it the world, has any bearing in reality. All that ended in 2012 was one of its calendar cycles, said co-author Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," said Aveni. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over," he added. "The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years -- and in places other than books -- before they recorded them in the Codices." Even though the 12-square mile (31-square kilometer) site of Xultun, deep in a rainforest where tens of thousands of people once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago, the house structure where the calendar is drawn on the walls was spotted in 2010. Researchers say careful excavations have revealed that the paintings inside -- including some of human figures wearing feather head-dresses -- show the first examples of Mayan art on a house interior. "It's weird that the Xultun finds exist at all," Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter (three feet) below the surface." @YahooNewsUK on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook

Earliest Mayan calendar shows no hint of 'world end' 05/10/2012 Yahoo! News	Return to Top
YOUR FRIENDS' ACTIVITY prev next Earliest Mayan calendar shows no hint of 'world end' AFP _ 29 mins ago The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said Thursday. Rather, the painted room in the residential complex at Xultun was likely the place where the town scribe kept records, scrawling computations on the walls in an effort to find "harmony between sky events and sacred rituals," said the study in the journal Science. The hieroglyphs date back to the ninth century, making them hundreds of years older than the calendars in the Maya Codices, which were recorded in bark-paper books from 1300 to 1521. Some appear to be the 365-day solar calendar , the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, said archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation. According to Saturno, the writing looks like someone's attempt to sort out a very long math problem, as if on a blackboard. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," Saturno said. "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," he added. "We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." Furthermore, there is no sign that the much-hyped myth that the Mayan calendar would end in 2012, and with it the world, has any bearing in reality. All that ended in 2012 was one of its calendar cycles, said co-author Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," said Aveni. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over," he added. "The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years -- and in places other than books -- before they recorded them in the Codices." Even though the 12-square mile (31-square kilometer) site of Xultun, deep in a rainforest where tens of thousands of people once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago, the house structure where the calendar is drawn on the walls was spotted in 2010. Researchers say careful excavations have revealed that the paintings inside -- including some of human figures wearing feather head-dresses -- show the first examples of Mayan art on a house interior. "It's weird that the Xultun finds exist at all," Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter (three feet) below the surface." @yahoonews on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook [ [ [['A picture is worth a thousand words', 5]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/why-facebook-bought-instagram-4-theories-160400376.html', '[Related: Why Facebook bought Instagram: 4 theories]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['He was in shock and still strapped to his seat', 9]], 'http://contributor.yahoo.com/join/yahoonews_virginiabeach', '[Did you witness the jet crash? Share your story with Yahoo! 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New Orleans Local News, Weather, Sports, Investigations Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/10/2012 WVUE-TV - Online MALCOLM RITTER	Return to Top
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

WTRF 7 News Sports Weather - Wheeling SteubenvilleAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/10/2012 WTRF-TV - Online MALCOLM RITTER	Return to Top
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

New York News \| New York Breaking News \| NYC HeadlinesAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/10/2012 WNYW-TV - Online MALCOLM RITTER	Return to Top
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." ___ Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org ___ Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Scientists find ancient Mayan astronomy records, with hint the world won't truly end this year 05/10/2012 Winnipeg Free Press - Online, The	Return to Top
Scientists find ancient Mayan astronomy records, with hint the world won't truly end this year By: Malcolm Ritter, The Associated Press Posted: 1:04 PM \| Comments: 0 (including replies) \| Last Modified: 2:22 PM NEW YORK, N.Y. - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years, meaning it could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals and could have been used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good the year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Maryland. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." ___ Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter (You must be logged in to post your reaction) Your reaction? You can comment on most stories on winnipegfreepress.com . You can also agree or disagree with other comments. All you need to do is register and/or login and you can join the conversation and give your feedback. The Winnipeg Free Press does not necessarily endorse any of the views posted. By submitting your comment, you agree to our Terms and Conditions . These terms were revised effective April 16, 2010; View the changes . New to commenting? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions .

Boston News, Weather, Sports \| FOX 25 \| MyFoxBostonAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/10/2012 WFXT-TV - Online MALCOLM RITTER	Return to Top
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Chicago News and Weather \| FOX Chicago NewsAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/10/2012 WFLD-TV - Online MALCOLM RITTER	Return to Top
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Oldest Mayan Calendar Revealed 05/10/2012 Wall Street Journal - Online	Return to Top
...The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Mr. Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, will report the discovery in...

New Mayan Discovery: The World Isn't Ending! 05/10/2012 TheDailyBeast.com Vivien Marx	Return to Top
The Mayans predicted that the world would end in 2012, right? Not according to the fascinating findings from a recent dig. Vivien Marx on why archaeologists are hopping with glee. In case you missed the newsflash, the end of days will not be December 21 of this year. You will need to buy holiday gifts after all. “That is correct, the world will not end,” says William Saturno, the Boston University archaeologist behind a new paper that could help put to rest the long-held myth that the ancient Mayans predicted a 2012 apocalypse—a belief still held by 10 percent of the world's population, according to Reuters. “A cycle is ending, but a new one begins, according to the Mayans, who regard their calendar as a series of infinite cycles,” he says. Saturno's report, which he unveiled in this week's edition of the journal Science along with colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin and Colgate University, deals with a fascinating trove of calendars and paintings from a Guatemala excavation that have many in the anthropology community hopping with glee. And not just about the delay of the world's end. In Xultún, a Mayan dynastic hub, Saturno and his colleagues dug up a small chamber (around 6 by 6 feet with 10-foot ceilings) in a large complex. There they found paintings of festive figures on the walls as well as a large number of delicately painted hieroglyphs and numbers—astronomical tables unlike any such notations seen before. The notations “got our attention very early on,” says David Stuart, a co-author of the study who specializes in Mesoamerican art and writing at the University of Texas in Austin. Did a dressing-room for a king eventually become a scribe's pad to work out numbers? Maybe. Artwork on the walls of the chamber the archaeologists found in the Maya hub of Xultún in Guatemala. (Tyrone Turner / National Geographic Society) The Science authors believe the excavated room is a work space where a Mayan nerd—a calendar-keeper, astronomer, and scribe—puzzled away, covering two walls with calculations much like today's scientists do on a whiteboard. The paintings and text date back to the year 800—a remarkable five centuries earlier than the oldest known Mayan hieroglyphic books, the Mayan Codices of the 15th century. Most intriguingly for modern-day doomsday prophets, the scribblings include four long numbers that represent multiples of set units of time using the Mayan calendar. In one column, time stretches reach 7,000 years into the future. Bingo! The apocalypse myth, says Stuart, is that the Mayan calendar shows the world ending after 13 periods, or 5,000 years, also called baktun. We are supposedly coming up on the end of the last one. Four long numbers on one wall of a chamber relate to the Mayan calendar and computations about the moon, sun and possibly Venus and Mars. The dates stretch some 7,000 years into the future. (William Saturno and David Stuart / National Geographic Society) This new find, however, is further proof that that belief is mistaken, says Stuart. The mural shows 17 baktuns, showing “there was a lot more to the Mayan calendar than just 13 baktuns.” The Mayan calendar reaches far beyond the year 2012, the scientists assure us. So who was drawing on the walls? The paintings show three life-size seated figures, clad in white loincloths and headdresses with feathers. They are looking upward toward a figure on another wall, painted in orange, with a much more elaborate headdress and jade wristlet, Saturno explains in a Science podcast. Mayan glyphs call this man Younger Brother Obsidian, who Saturno believes could be a relative of the kig—or perhaps the scribe himself. His outstretched hand holds a stylus. He points toward another figure, who is identifiable as the king of Xultún. “A big role of Mayan kings is to dance,” says Stephen Houston, a Brown University Mayan scholar. At certain points in the year, the king stepped out with an elaborate choreography in full jade-clinking costume. “I don't see any relation to these weird notations,” says Houston. “I suspect the painting is earlier.” Did a dressing-room for a king eventually become a scribe's pad to work out numbers? Maybe. The Science authors think the chamber was a work space, a scriptorium, where books were begun. But Houston wonders. “Frankly, that interpretation does not speak strongly to me,” he says. The tightly patterned organization of the notation is a “very strange find” and appears too careful to be a document draft. Making books would also require plenty of natural light. “It is not a tremendously great work space, because it is dark,” Houston says. One might also think these types of chambers are found all over the Mayan region, but “in fact they are not,” Houston says. There is something special happening in the room, a secret that will be understood only after the room's full inventory has been deciphered. Six million Mayans still live in Mexico and Guatemala. A handful of their communities, mostly in Guatemala, continue to use the traditional calendar for ritual purposes and divination, says Dartmouth College anthropologist John Watanabe who studies contemporary Maya culture. This new finding “can only deepen the long cultural tradition that living Maya today still preserve,” he says. What remains fascinating about the Mayans, Houston says, is their endless passage of cycles. Their culture “is really about renewal and continuity—and not about the ending of all days.” Vivien Marx is a freelance science writer in New York. On the web: vivienmarx.com, Twitter @metricausa

Ancient Time: Earliest Mayan Astronomical Calendar Unearthed in Guatemala Ruins 05/10/2012 Scientific American - Online	Return to Top
News \| More Science The ninth-century wall paintings predate existing Mayan astronomical records by hundreds of years A HEAVENLY FIND: Faded bar-and-dot numerals on the wall of a structure in Guatemala, enhanced here by an overlaid illustration of the markings, were recently discovered by archaeologist William Saturno and his colleagues. The numbers relate to various astronomical phenomena, although their exact meaning is not yet known. Image: Illustration by William Saturno and David Stuart © 2012 National Geographic An excavation of an archaeological site in Guatemala has uncovered Mayan astronomical records dating to the ninth century A.D. The tabulated numbers, which predate existing Mayan astronomical documents by several hundred years, chart the motion of the moon and also seem to relate to the orbits of Mars and Venus. (And good news: they do not predict the world will end this year—in fact, some of the numbers appear to refer to dates far in the future.) Archaeologists stumbled onto the astronomical tables, inscribed on the walls of a small building, while excavating part of the Xultun ruins, a large, heavily looted archaeological site in northern Guatemala, near its borders with Mexico and Belize. William Saturno, an archaeologist at Boston University (B.U.), recalls that an undergraduate student noticed the remains of a mural on one of the walls, triggering an excavation of the room, which had been partly exposed by looters. On three of the walls the researchers found figural paintings, along with a series of glyphs and numerals. The presence of lunar glyphs in one of the numerical tables raised the possibility that the table related to astronomy. After all, evidence from later centuries has proved that the Maya kept highly accurate records of astronomical phenomena. But the context of the numerals, many of which have deteriorated beyond recognition, was not immediately clear. "It took some decoding," Saturno says. The numbers on the table, arranged in columns of three numerals each, looked like calendrical entries in well-studied Mayan manuscripts, written on bark paper, that survive from sometime around the 13th to 15th centuries. So the researchers took the numbers to be days tallied in units of the culture's Long Count calendar—the three numerals in each column representing multiples of a 360-day "tun," a 20-day "winal" and a one-day "k'in," respectively. The number column 13/5/4, then, would equal 4,784 days (13 x 360 + 5 x 20 + 4). The dates of the final two columns, which are the most legible, are separated by 178 days. The date in the third-to-last column, which is mostly legible, looks to be separated from that in the penultimate column by 177, 178 or 179 days, pointing to a common pattern. The Maya clustered lunar months into sixes, making lunar "semesters" lasting 177 or 178 days. The variation accounts for the calendar's whole-number approximation of a messy decimal number, in much the same way that the modern calendar uses 366-day leap years to keep the months in sync with Earth's orbit around the sun. The researchers suggest that the Xultun table marks a series of lunar semesters over some 13 years. Saturno and his colleagues from B.U., the University of Texas at Austin and Colgate University report their findings in the May 11 issue of Science. Another table contains four much larger numbers whose meaning is less clear. But all four numbers are divisible by 18,980, the number of days that makes up what is known as the Calendar Round, a combined cycle of the solar year and the Mayan ritual year. "It turns out these numbers are really important anniversaries," Saturno says. "They're essentially numbers that represent multiples of Maya calendrical periods." Intriguingly, the tables also hint at planetary motions. All four numbers are multiples of 780, the number of days it takes Mars to return to the same location in the sky, a tally known as the synodic period of Mars. The tallies are also closely related to the position of Venus: all four are whole- or half-number multiples of Venus's synodic period. If the numbers indeed represent days, the largest entry in the table, 2,448,420, lies thousands of years in the future.

Inscriptions Found On Walls of a Maya Dwelling Reflect Calendar Reaching Well Beyond 2012 05/10/2012 ScienceDaily	Return to Top
ScienceDaily (May 10, 2012) A vast city built by the ancient Maya and discovered nearly a century ago is finally starting to yield its secrets. Excavating for the first time in the sprawling complex of Xultún in Guatemala's Petén region, a team of archaeologists lead by Boston University Assistant Professor of Archaeology William Saturno has uncovered a structure that contains what appears to be a work space for the town's scribe, its walls adorned with unique paintings -- one depicting a lineup of men in black uniforms -- and hundreds of scrawled numbers. Many are calculations relating to the Maya calendar. One wall of the structure, thought to be a house, is covered with tiny, millimeter-thick, red and black glyphs unlike any seen before at other Maya sites. Some appear to represent the various calendrical cycles charted by the Maya -- the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, reports Saturno, who led the exploration and excavation. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," Saturno said. "It's like an episode of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard." The discovery is reported in the June issue of National Geographic magazine and in the May 11 issue of the journal Science. The project scientists say that despite popular belief, there is no sign that the Maya calendar -- or the world -- was to end in the year 2012, just one of its calendar cycles. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," said Anthony Aveni,, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, a coauthor of the Science paper. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over." The mural represents the first Maya art to be found on the walls of a house. "There are tiny glyphs all over the wall, bars and dots representing columns of numbers. It's the kind of thing that only appears in one place -- the Dresden Codex, which the Maya wrote many centuries later. We've never seen anything like it," said David Stuart, Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing at the University of Texas-Austin, who deciphered the glyphs. The vegetation-covered structure was first spotted in 2010 by Saturno's student Max Chamberlain, who was following looters' trenches to explore the site of Xultún, hidden in the remote rain forest of the Petén. Then, supported by a series of grants from the National Geographic Society, Saturno and his team launched an organized exploration and excavation of the house, working urgently to beat the region's rainy seasons, which threatened to erase what time had so far preserved. Xultún, a 12-square-mile site where tens of thousands once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago by Guatemalan workers and roughly mapped in the 1920s by Sylvanus Morley, who named the site "Xultún" -- "end stone." Scientists from Harvard University mapped more of the site in the 1970s. The house discovered by Saturno's team was numbered 54 of 56 structures counted and mapped at that time. Thousands at Xultún remain uncounted. The team's excavations reveal that monumental construction at Xultún began in the first centuries B.C. The site thrived until the end of the Classic Maya period; the site's last carved monument dates to around 890 A.D. Xultún stood only about five miles from San Bartolo, where in 2001 Saturno found rare, extensive murals painted on the walls of a ritual structure by the ancient Maya. "It's weird that the Xultún finds exist at all," Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter below the surface." The Writing on the Walls The house contains three intact walls, each telling its own story to researchers -- and posing its own mysteries: The north wall lies straight ahead as one enters the room. An off-center niche in the wall features a painting of a seated king, wearing blue feathers. A long rod made of bone mounted on the wall allowed a curtain to be pulled across the king's portrait, hiding it and revealing a well-preserved painting of a man whose image is wrapped around the wall; he is depicted in vibrant orange and holds a pen. Maya glyphs near his face call him "Younger Brother Obsidian," a curious title seldom seen in Maya text. Based on other Maya sites, Saturno theorizes he could be the son or younger brother of the king and possibly the artist-scribe who lived in the house. "The portrait of the king implies a relationship between whoever lived in this space and the royal family," Saturno said. Four long numbers on the wall representing one-third of a million to 2.5 million days likely bring together all of the astronomical cycles -- such as those of Mars, Venus and the lunar eclipses -- the Maya thought important, dates that stretch some 7,000 years into the future. This is the first place Maya archaeologists have found that seems to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. Another number scratched into the plaster surface likely records the date -- 813 A.D., a time when the Maya world had begun to collapse. The west wall: Three male figures loom on this wall, all of them seated and painted in black, wearing only white loincloths, medallions around their necks and identical single-feathered, miter-style head dresses. "We haven't seen uniform head dresses like that anywhere before," Saturno said. "It's clearly a costume of some kind." One of the figures is particularly burly, "like a sumo wrestler," and he is labeled "Older Brother Obsidian." Another is labeled as a youth. The east wall: Although badly eroded, another black-painted human figure and remnants of others can be seen. But the wall is dominated by numerical figures, including columns of numbers representing counting and calendrical calculations. Some of the numbers track the phases of the moon; others try to reconcile lunar periods with the solar calendar. "Skywatching like this was a tool for predicting eclipses," Saturno said. One well-preserved section contains numerical notes painted in red that appear to be corrections to more formal calculations appearing alongside them. "The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years -- and in places other than books -- before they recorded them in the Codices," Aveni said. The scientists say the symbols reflect a certain world view. "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," Saturno said. "We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." Note: William Saturno and his work at Xultún will be featured in the June issue of National Geographic magazine, which will be on digital newsstands Tuesday, May 15, and on print newsstands Tuesday, May 29. The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Boston University College of Arts & Sciences, via Newswise. W. A. Saturno, D. Stuart, A. F. Aveni, F. Rossi. Ancient Maya Astronomical Tables from Xultun, Guatemala. Science, 2012; 336 (6082): 714 DOI: 10.1126/science.1221444

Mural Found On Walls a First for a Maya Dwelling; Painted Numbers Reflect Calendar Reaching Well Beyond 2012 05/10/2012 ScienceDaily	Return to Top
ScienceDaily (May 10, 2012) A vast city built by the ancient Maya and discovered nearly a century ago is finally starting to yield its secrets. Excavating for the first time in the sprawling complex of Xultún in Guatemala's Petén region, archaeologists have uncovered a structure that contains what appears to be a work space for the town's scribe, its walls adorned with unique paintings -- one depicting a lineup of men in black uniforms -- and hundreds of scrawled numbers. Many are calculations relating to the Maya calendar. One wall of the structure, thought to be a house, is covered with tiny, millimeter-thick, red and black glyphs unlike any seen before at other Maya sites. Some appear to represent the various calendrical cycles charted by the Maya -- the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, reports archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," Saturno said. "It's like an episode of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard." The discovery is reported in the June issue of National Geographic magazine and in the May 11 issue of the journal Science. The project scientists say that despite popular belief, there is no sign that the Maya calendar -- or the world -- was to end in the year 2012, just one of its calendar cycles. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," said Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, a coauthor of the Science paper. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over." The mural represents the first Maya art to be found on the walls of a house. "There are tiny glyphs all over the wall, bars and dots representing columns of numbers. It's the kind of thing that only appears in one place -- the Dresden Codex, which the Maya wrote many centuries later. We've never seen anything like it," said David Stuart, Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing at the University of Texas-Austin, who deciphered the glyphs. The vegetation-covered structure was first spotted in 2010 by Saturno's student Max Chamberlain, who was following looters' trenches to explore the site of Xultún, hidden in the remote rain forest of the Petén. Then, supported by a series of grants from the National Geographic Society, Saturno and his team launched an organized exploration and excavation of the house, working urgently to beat the region's rainy seasons, which threatened to erase what time had so far preserved. Xultún, a 12-square-mile site where tens of thousands once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago by a Guatemalan worker and roughly mapped in the 1920s by Sylvanus Morley, who named the site "Xultún" -- "end stone." Scientists from Harvard University mapped more of the site in the 1970s. The house discovered by Saturno's team was numbered 54 of 56 structures counted and mapped at that time. Thousands at Xultún remain uncounted. The team's excavations reveal that monumental construction at Xultún began in the first centuries B.C. The site thrived until the end of the Classic Maya period; the site's last carved monument dates to around 890 A.D. Xultún stood only about five miles from San Bartolo, where in 2001 Saturno found rare, extensive murals painted on the walls of a ritual structure by the ancient Maya. "It's weird that the Xultún finds exist at all," Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter below the surface." The Writing on the Walls The house contains three intact walls, each telling its own story to researchers -- and posing its own mysteries: The north wall The north wall lies straight ahead as one enters the room. An off-center niche in the wall features a painting of a seated king, wearing blue feathers. A long rod made of bone mounted on the wall allowed a curtain to be pulled across the king's portrait, hiding it and revealing a well-preserved painting of a man whose image is wrapped around the wall; he is depicted in vibrant orange and holds a pen. Maya glyphs near his face call him "Younger Brother Obsidian," a curious title seldom seen in Maya text. Based on other Maya sites, Saturno theorizes he could be the son or younger brother of the king and possibly the artist-scribe who lived in the house. "The portrait of the king implies a relationship between whoever lived in this space and the royal family," Saturno said. Four long numbers on the wall representing one-third of a million to 2.5 million days likely bring together all of the astronomical cycles -- such as those of Mars, Venus and the lunar eclipses -- the Maya thought important, dates that stretch some 7,000 years into the future. This is the first place Maya archaeologists have found that seems to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. Another number scratched into the plaster surface likely records the date -- 813 A.D., a time when the Maya world had begun to collapse. The west wall Three male figures loom on this wall, all of them seated and painted in black, wearing only white loincloths, medallions around their necks and identical single-feathered, miter-style head dresses. "We haven't seen uniform head dresses like that anywhere before," Saturno said. "It's clearly a costume of some kind." One of the figures is particularly burly, "like a sumo wrestler," and he is labeled "Older Brother Obsidian." Another is labeled as a youth. The east wall Although badly eroded, another black-painted human figure and remnants of others can be seen. But the wall is dominated by numerical figures, including columns of numbers representing counting and calendrical calculations. Some of the numbers track the phases of the moon; others try to reconcile lunar periods with the solar calendar. "Skywatching like this was a tool for predicting eclipses," Saturno said. One well-preserved section contains numerical notes painted in red that appear to be corrections to more formal calculations appearing alongside them. "The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years -- and in places other than books -- before they recorded them in the Codices," Aveni said. The scientists say the symbols reflect a certain world view. "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," Saturno said. "We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." Note: William Saturno and his work at Xultún will be featured in the June issue of National Geographic magazine, which will be on digital newsstands Tuesday, May 15, and on print newsstands Tuesday, May 29. A video on the project is available at: http://bit.ly/K4wDHz. The mural was photographed as a high-resolution panoramic gigapan, creating a zoomable view for users to explore the painting details online: http://on.natgeo.com/KQHQWq. The above story is reprinted from materials provided by National Geographic Society. W. A. Saturno, D. Stuart, A. F. Aveni, F. Rossi. Ancient Maya Astronomical Tables from Xultun, Guatemala. Science, 2012; 336 (6082): 714 DOI: 10.1126/science.1221444

Quincy Herald-Whig \| Illinois & Missouri News, SportsAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/10/2012 Quincy Herald-Whig - Online MALCOLM RITTER	Return to Top
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Ancient Mayan workshop for... 05/10/2012 Omaha World-Herald - Online	Return to Top
Published Thursday May 10, 2012 Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years it could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "`What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." - - -

Earliest Mayan calendar shows no hint of 'world end' 05/10/2012 National Post - Online Agence France-Presse	Return to Top
WASHINGTON — The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said Thursday. Rather, the painted room in the residential complex at Xultun was likely the place where the town scribe kept records, scrawling computations on the walls in an effort to find “harmony between sky events and sacred rituals,” said the study in the journal Science. The hieroglyphs date back to the ninth century, making them hundreds of years older than the calendars in the Maya Codices, which were recorded in bark-paper books from 1300 to 1521. [np-related] Some appear to be the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, said archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation. According to Saturno, the writing looks like someone's attempt to sort out a very long math problem, as if on a blackboard. “For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community,” Saturno said. “The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this,” he added. “We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset.” Furthermore, there is no sign that the much-hyped myth that the Mayan calendar would end in 2012, and with it the world, has any bearing in reality. All that ended in 2012 was one of its calendar cycles, said co-author Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University. “It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000,” said Aveni. “The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over,” he added. “The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years -- and in places other than books -- before they recorded them in the Codices.” Even though the 12-square mile (31-square kilometer) site of Xultun, deep in a rainforest where tens of thousands of people once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago, the house structure where the calendar is drawn on the walls was spotted in 2010. Researchers say careful excavations have revealed that the paintings inside -- including some of human figures wearing feather head-dresses -- show the first examples of Mayan art on a house interior. “It's weird that the Xultun finds exist at all,” Saturno said. “Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter (three feet) below the surface.”

Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered- Sci/Tech News - MyNorthwest.com 05/10/2012 MyNorthwest.com	Return to Top
AP Science Writer NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "`What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." ___

Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered \| Long Island Press 05/10/2012 Long Island Press - Online	Return to Top
Tell A Friend! Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered By Associated Press on May 10th, 2012 NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "`What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." -

Minneapolis News and Weather KMSP FOX 9Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/10/2012 KMSP-TV - Online MALCOLM RITTER	Return to Top
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." ___ Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org ___ Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Dallas News \| myFOXdfw.comAncient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/10/2012 KDFW-TV - Online MALCOLM RITTER	Return to Top
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered NEW YORK (AP) - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers shows calendar doesn't end at 2012 - Peoria, IL - pjstar.com 05/10/2012 Journal Star - Online	Return to Top
By MALCOLM RITTER The Associated Press Posted May 10, 2012 @ 03:37 PM Last update May 10, 2012 @ 05:08 PM NEW YORK - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." Loading commenting interface...

Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers shows calendar doesn't end at 2012 05/10/2012 Journal Star - Online MALCOLM RITTER	Return to Top
Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery."

Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 05/10/2012 Jakarta Post	Return to Top
Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered Malcolm Ritter, Associated Press, New York \| Fri, 05/11/2012 8:24 AM Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years, meaning it could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals and could have been used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good the year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Maryland. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery."

Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/10/2012 Inside Scoop SF	Return to Top
Article:Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered:/n/a/2012/05/10/national/a110120D60.DTL Article:Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered:/n/a/2012/05/10/national/a110120D60.DTL Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Associated Press May 10, 2012 11:01 AM Copyright Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Thursday, May 10, 2012 (05-10) 11:01 PDT NEW YORK, (AP) -- Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years it could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "`What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." ___

No hint of 'world end' in earliest Mayan calendar 05/10/2012 Gulf Times	Return to Top
The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said yesterday. Rather, the painted room in the residential complex at Xultun was likely the place where the town scribe kept records, scrawling computations on the walls in an effort to find “harmony between sky events and sacred rituals,” said the study in the journal Science. The hieroglyphs date back to the ninth century, making them hundreds of years older than the calendars in the Maya Codices, which were recorded in bark-paper books from 1300 to 1521. Some are the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, said William Saturno of Boston University. “For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community,” Saturno said. “The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this.” “We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset.” Furthermore, there is no sign that the much-hyped myth that the Mayan calendar would end in 2012, and with it the world, has any bearing in reality. All that ended in 2012 was one of its calendar cycles, said co-author Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University. “It's like the odometer of a car,” said Aveni. “The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over.” "> Daily Newspaper published by Gulf Publishing & Printing Co. Doha, Qatar

New Mayan calendar discovered: world won't end in 2012 05/10/2012 GlobalPost.com	Return to Top
Earth has a new reason to celebrate. It's looking like we will make it past December 21, 2012. The Mayan sculpture 'Plaque of Venus'. Venus was one of the most important celestial bodies in the Mayan astronomical observations. (Raul Arboleba/AFP/Getty Images) Earth has a new reason to celebrate. It's looking like we will make it past Dec. 21, 2012. According to LiveScience, researchers have unearthed the oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar in the Guatemalan rainforest. Archeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs, told LiveScience the calendar does not mark the end of the world. In fact, quiet the opposite. Stuart said, "The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future. Numbers we can't even wrap our heads around." According to SFGate the calendar, which is said to be exquisitely preserved, was found in a 1,000-year-old house in Guatemala. The home's interior was adorned with paintings of people, numbers and astronomical symbols. More from GlobalPost: Mexico uses Mayan doomsday prediction to lure tourists The newly discovered astronomical tables are at least 500 years older than those preserved in the Maya codices, said Science magazine. "I think we are all astonished by this find," Stephen Houston, an archeologist at Brown University who was not part of the team, told Science Magazine. The ninth-century structure was first found in 2010, according to SFGate, by Max Chamberlain, a student of Saturno. Saturno followed looters' trails to the remote rainforest site. It was there he found the calendar exposed behind a wall destroyed by looters. In a statement to SFGate, Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University and coauthor of the paper said, "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000." William Saturno, the coauthor of the paper,explained to Science Magazine, "The Maya liked to anchor their historic events in cosmic time," which is why the culture has such a deep history and connection to calendars. He further explained, "Maya scribes relied on calendrical knowledge to schedule key ceremonies on the most appropriate dates, such as a day when an important mythical event was said to take place or an astronomical phenomenon such as an eclipse occurred." Saturno was extremely excited about their find. He told it was like, "looking into Da Vinci's workshop.”.” More from GlobalPost:1 in 10 of your friends may be counting down to the end of the world http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/new-mayan-calendar-discovered-world-wont-end-2012

Mayan Astronomy Workshop Discovered 05/10/2012 Fox News Latino	Return to Top
In this undated photo made available by National Geographic, conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Maya house that dates to the 9th century A.D. in the Maya city Zultun in northeastern Guatemala. Archaeologists have found the small room where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. Anthony Aveni of Colgate University, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, are reporting the discovery in the Friday, May 11, 2012 issue of the journal Science. (AP Photo/National Geographic, Tyrone Turner)Tyrone Turner Photographer (AP Photo/National Geographic, Tyrone Turner) This undated photo made available by National Geographic shows the painted figure of a man through the doorway of an ancient dwelling in the Maya city Zultun in northeastern Guatemala. Archaeologists have found the small room where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. Anthony Aveni of Colgate University, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, are reporting the discovery in the Friday, May 11, 2012 issue of the journal Science. (AP Photo/National Geographic, Tyrone Turner)AP2011 Artwork, the first to be found on walls of a Maya house, adorn a dwelling in the ruined city of Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. Archaeologists have found the small room where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. Anthony Aveni of Colgate University, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, are reporting the discovery in the Friday, May 11, 2012 issue of the journal Science. (AP Photo/National Geographic, Tyrone Turner)AP2011 NEW YORK – Archaeologists discovered a small room with walls used by Mayan royal scribes as a type of blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery." Based on reporting by The Associated Press. 1,000 Year Old Mayan Kitchen Expedition's Quest for Mayan Gold Finds...

Artwork found on walls a first for a Maya dwelling 05/10/2012 EurekAlert!	Return to Top
Painted numbers reflect calendar reaching well beyond 2012 WASHINGTONA vast city built by the ancient Maya and discovered nearly a century ago is finally starting to yield its secrets. Excavating for the first time in the sprawling complex of Xultún in Guatemalas Petén region, archaeologists have uncovered a structure that contains what appears to be a work space for the towns scribe, its walls adorned with unique paintings one depicting a lineup of men in black uniforms and hundreds of scrawled numbers. Many are calculations relating to the Maya calendar. One wall of the structure, thought to be a house, is covered with tiny, millimeter-thick, red and black glyphs unlike any seen before at other Maya sites. Some appear to represent the various calendrical cycles charted by the Maya the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, reports archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation. For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community, Saturno said. Its like an episode of TVs Big Bang Theory, a geek math problem and theyre painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard. The discovery is reported in the June issue of National Geographic magazine and in the May 11 issue of the journal Science. The project scientists say that despite popular belief, there is no sign that the Maya calendar or the world was to end in the year 2012, just one of its calendar cycles. Its like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000, said Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, a coauthor of the Science paper. The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over. The mural represents the first Maya art to be found on the walls of a house. There are tiny glyphs all over the wall, bars and dots representing columns of numbers. Its the kind of thing that only appears in one place the Dresden Codex, which the Maya wrote many centuries later. Weve never seen anything like it, said David Stuart, Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing at the University of Texas-Austin, who deciphered the glyphs. The vegetation-covered structure was first spotted in 2010 by Saturnos student Max Chamberlain, who was following looters trenches to explore the site of Xultún, hidden in the remote rain forest of the Petén. Then, supported by a series of grants from the National Geographic Society, Saturno and his team launched an organized exploration and excavation of the house, working urgently to beat the regions rainy seasons, which threatened to erase what time had so far preserved. Xultún, a 12-square-mile site where tens of thousands once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago by a Guatemalan worker and roughly mapped in the 1920s by Sylvanus Morley, who named the site Xultún end stone. Scientists from Harvard University mapped more of the site in the 1970s. The house discovered by Saturnos team was numbered 54 of 56 structures counted and mapped at that time. Thousands at Xultún remain uncounted. The teams excavations reveal that monumental construction at Xultún began in the first centuries B.C. The site thrived until the end of the Classic Maya period; the sites last carved monument dates to around 890 A.D. Xultún stood only about five miles from San Bartolo, where in 2001 Saturno found rare, extensive murals painted on the walls of a ritual structure by the ancient Maya. Its weird that the Xultún finds exist at all, Saturno said. Such writings and artwork on walls dont preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter below the surface. The Writing on the Walls The house contains three intact walls, each telling its own story to researchers and posing its own mysteries: The north wall lies straight ahead as one enters the room. An off-center niche in the wall features a painting of a seated king, wearing blue feathers. A long rod made of bone mounted on the wall allowed a curtain to be pulled across the kings portrait, hiding it and revealing a well-preserved painting of a man whose image is wrapped around the wall; he is depicted in vibrant orange and holds a pen. Maya glyphs near his face call him Younger Brother Obsidian, a curious title seldom seen in Maya text. Based on other Maya sites, Saturno theorizes he could be the son or younger brother of the king and possibly the artist-scribe who lived in the house. The portrait of the king implies a relationship between whoever lived in this space and the royal family, Saturno said. Four long numbers on the wall representing one-third of a million to 2.5 million days likely bring together all of the astronomical cycles such as those of Mars, Venus and the lunar eclipses that the Maya thought important, dates that stretch some 7,000 years into the future. This is the first place Maya archaeologists have found that seems to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. Another number scratched into the plaster surface likely records the date 813 A.D., a time when the Maya world had begun to collapse. The west wall: Three male figures loom on this wall, all of them seated and painted in black, wearing only white loincloths, medallions around their necks and identical single-feathered, miter-style head dresses. We havent seen uniform head dresses like that anywhere before, Saturno said. Its clearly a costume of some kind. One of the figures is particularly burly, like a sumo wrestler, and he is labeled Older Brother Obsidian. Another is labeled as a youth. The east wall: Although badly eroded, another black-painted human figure and remnants of others can be seen. But the wall is dominated by numerical figures, including columns of numbers representing counting and calendrical calculations. Some of the numbers track the phases of the moon; others try to reconcile lunar periods with the solar calendar. Skywatching like this was a tool for predicting eclipses, Saturno said. One well-preserved section contains numerical notes painted in red that appear to be corrections to more formal calculations appearing alongside them. The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years and in places other than books before they recorded them in the Codices, Aveni said. The scientists say the symbols reflect a certain world view. The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this, Saturno said. We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. Its an entirely different mindset. NOTE: William Saturno and his work at Xultún will be featured in the June issue of National Geographic magazine, which will be on digital newsstands Tuesday, May 15, and on print newsstands Tuesday, May 29. A video on the project can be viewed and embedded: http://bit.ly/K4wDHz. The mural was photographed as a high-resolution panoramic gigapan, creating a zoomable view for users to explore the painting details online: http://on.natgeo.com/KQHQWq

Earliest Known Mayan Calendar Goes Beyond 2012 05/10/2012 Epoch Times - Online Belinda McCallum	Return to Top
Conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Maya house that dates to the 9th century A.D. The figure of a man who may have been the town scribe appears on the wall to her left. The research is supported by the National Geographic Society. (Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic) Ninth-century hieroglyphs painted by a Mayan scribe in Guatemala are records of lunar and perhaps planetary cycles, forming the oldest known Mayan calendar. The city of Xultún was discovered almost a century ago in the remote rainforest of the Petén region and covers 12 square miles. It was once home to many thousands of people, and monuments were constructed from the first centuries B.C. Only 56 structures have been counted and mapped among thousands more. Led by William Saturno from Boston University, a team of archeologists has now excavated the calendar keeper's room, which seems to be part of a house. This is the first time that Mayan paintings have been discovered on the walls of a house. Despite damage by looters, numerous red and black glyphs, and various human figures are visible on the three intact walls. Calculations on the east wall refer to the lunar cycle, whereas the more obscure calculations on the north wall could be linked with Mars, Mercury, or Venus. According to the researchers, Mayan calendars aimed to harmonize sacred rituals with celestial events. “For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community,” said Saturno in a press release. “It's like an episode of TV's ‘Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall,” he added. “They seem to be using it like a blackboard.” However, there is no indication that our world will end in 2012; rather, it will just enter another cycle. “It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000,” said study co-author Anthony Aveni at Colgate University in the release. “The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over.” The red and black calculations on one of the walls seem to represent the various calendrical cycles, ranging from the 260-day ceremonial calendar to the 780-day cycle of Mars. “There are tiny glyphs all over the wall, bars and dots representing columns of numbers,” said decipherer David Stuart at the University of Texas–Austin in the release. “It's the kind of thing that only appears in one place—the Dresden Codex, which the Maya wrote many centuries later,” he continued. “We've never seen anything like it.” The Mayan Codices were books written on bark paper a few centuries before Christopher Columbus landed in 1492. When one enters the room, the north wall lies ahead, featuring a seated king adorned with blue feathers. Painted in bright orange, another man is carrying a pen, identifying him as the resident scribe, who may also have been the king's son or younger brother. “The portrait of the king implies a relationship between whoever lived in this space and the royal family,” Saturno explained. Four long numbers on this wall show one-third of a million to 2.5 million days, stretching about 7,000 years into the future. These numbers seem to combine all the astronomical cycles important to the Maya, such as those of Mars, Venus, and lunar eclipses. Such a tabulation of all of these cycles has never been found before. “The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years—and in places other than books—before they recorded them in the Codices,” Aveni said. “The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this,” Saturno said. “We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change,” he concluded. “It's an entirely different mindset.” The findings were published in Science on May 11 and will be discussed in the June issue of National Geographic magazine. The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter Follow Belinda McCallum, EpochTimesSci & EpochTimesSpace on Twitter Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/epochtimessci Tags: 2012archaeologyastronomycalendarMayan culture

Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered \| Deseret News 05/10/2012 Deseret News - Online	Return to Top
About this ad In this undated photo made available by National Geographic, conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Maya house that dates to the 9th century A.D. in the Maya city Zultun in northeastern Guatemala. Archaeologists have found the small room where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. Anthony Aveni of Colgate University, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, are reporting the discovery in the Friday, May 11, 2012 issue of the journal Science. National Geographic, Tyrone Turner, Associated Press Summary Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. NEW YORK - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. About this ad Recommended Stories

Archaeologists discover Mayan astronomers' workshop 05/10/2012 Charleston Daily Mail - Online	Return to Top
Conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the wall of a Mayan house that dates to the 9th century in the Mayan city of Zultun in Guatemala. NEW YORK - Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Mayan civilization. Scientists already knew the Maya must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said.

Mayan workshop for astronomers found; appears to debunk 2012 scare 05/10/2012 Caribbean Business - Online : The Associated Press	Return to Top
NEW YORK Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "'What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery."

Earliest Known Mayan Calendar Found in Guatemalan House 05/10/2012 Bloomberg News - Online Elizabeth Lopatto	Return to Top
Tyrone Turner/ National Geographic via Bloomberg The painted figure of a man - possibly a scribe who once lived in the house built by the ancient Maya - is illuminated through a doorway to the dwelling, in northeastern Guatemala. The structure represents the first Maya house found to contain artwork on its walls. The research is supported by the National Geographic Society. The painted figure of a man - possibly a scribe who once lived in the house built by the ancient Maya - is illuminated through a doorway to the dwelling, in northeastern Guatemala. The structure represents the first Maya house found to contain artwork on its walls. The research is supported by the National Geographic Society. Photographer: Tyrone Turner/ National Geographic via Bloomberg A 1,000-year-old house in Guatemala, its interior adorned with paintings of people, numbers and astronomical symbols, has yielded the earliest known Mayan calendar ever found, archaeologists said. The mural, covering three walls and a ceiling, is also the first Mayan art discovered in a building thought to be a house, according to the report, published in the journal Science. The researchers believe dates on the walls represent astronomical cycles of Mars, Venus, and lunar eclipses for 7,000 years. That suggests Mayans had computed the sky's events hundreds of years before their now-famous Codices, the hieroglyphic manuscripts that record the civilization's history and chronicles. The oldest of the codices was written about 1300, according to the report. “They're painting it on the wall,” said William Saturno, an archaeologist at Boston University and lead author of the report, in a statement. “They seem to be using it like a blackboard.” The ninth-century structure was first found in 2010, by Max Chamberlain, a student of Saturno, who had followed looters' trails to the remote rainforest site. As for a popularly held belief that the Mayan calendar predicts the world will end in 2012, no such sign was found in the latest discovery, researchers said in a statement. “It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000,” said Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University and coauthor of the paper, in the statement. The site of the discovery is part of a city called Xultun, in Guatemala's largest and northernmost region, Peten. The murals include a sitting king garlanded with feathers. Another painting shows a man in orange, holding a pen, who may be the house's occupant, a scribe. Four numbers on the wall may represent the astronomical cycles. The ancient Mayan civilization reached the pinnacle of its power around the sixth century, covering all of Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. Today's discovery dates from the so-called classic period, when many of the temples and palaces were built. Beginning in the early ninth century, the cities were abandoned. Researchers aren't sure why. To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Lopatto in New York at elopatto@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net.

Earliest Mayan Calendar Found in Guatemala House 05/10/2012 Bloomberg Businessweek - Online Elizabeth Lopatto	Return to Top
A 1,000-year-old house in Guatemala, its interior adorned with paintings of people, numbers and astronomical symbols, has yielded the earliest known Mayan calendar ever found, archaeologists said. The mural, covering three walls and a ceiling, is also the first Mayan art discovered in a building thought to be a house, according to the report, published in the journal Science. The researchers believe dates on the walls represent astronomical cycles of Mars, Venus, and lunar eclipses for 7,000 years. That suggests Mayans had computed the sky's events hundreds of years before their now-famous Codices, the hieroglyphic manuscripts that record the civilization's history and chronicles. The oldest of the codices was written about 1300, according to the report. “They're painting it on the wall,” said William Saturno, an archaeologist at Boston University and lead author of the report, in a statement. “They seem to be using it like a blackboard.” The ninth-century structure was first found in 2010, by Max Chamberlain, a student of Saturno, who had followed looters' trails to the remote rainforest site. As for a popularly held belief that the Mayan calendar predicts the world will end in 2012, no such sign was found in the latest discovery, researchers said in a statement. “It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000,” said Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University and coauthor of the paper, in the statement. Home of a Scribe The site of the discovery is part of a city called Xultun, in Guatemala's largest and northernmost region, Peten. The murals include a sitting king garlanded with feathers. Another painting shows a man in orange, holding a pen, who may be the house's occupant, a scribe. Four numbers on the wall may represent the astronomical cycles. The ancient Mayan civilization reached the pinnacle of its power around the sixth century, covering all of Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. Today's discovery dates from the so-called classic period, when many of the temples and palaces were built. Beginning in the early ninth century, the cities were abandoned. Researchers aren't sure why. To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Lopatto in New York at elopatto@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net.

Mayan calendar offers no doomsday hint 05/10/2012 Australian, The - Online	Return to Top
The Australian Weather: Sydney 14°C - 28°C . Mostly sunny. Artwork, the first to be found on walls of a Maya house, adorn a dwelling in the ruined city of Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. Picture: AP Source: AdelaideNow THE earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said today. Rather, the painted room in the residential complex at Xultun was likely the place where the town scribe kept records, scrawling computations on the walls in an effort to find "harmony between sky events and sacred rituals," said the study in the journal Science. The hieroglyphs date back to the ninth century, making them hundreds of years older than the calendars in the Maya Codices, which were recorded in bark-paper books from 1300 to 1521. Some appear to be the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars, said archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation. According to Saturno, the writing looks like someone's attempt to sort out a very long math problem, as if on a blackboard. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," Saturno said. "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," he added. "We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." Furthermore, there is no sign that the much-hyped myth that the Mayan calendar would end in 2012, and with it the world, has any bearing in reality. All that ended in 2012 was one of its calendar cycles, said co-author Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," said Aveni. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over," he added. "The most exciting point is that we now see that the Maya were making such computations hundreds of years - and in places other than books - before they recorded them in the Codices." Even though the 31sq km site of Xultun, deep in a rainforest where tens of thousands of people once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago, the house structure where the calendar is drawn on the walls was spotted in 2010. Researchers say careful excavations have revealed that the paintings inside - including some of human figures wearing feather head-dresses - show the first examples of Mayan art on a house interior. "It's weird that the Xultun finds exist at all," Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a metre below the surface." AFP

Relax - even the Maya didn't believe the world will end in 2012. Here's proof 05/10/2012 Australian IT Peter Farquhar	Return to Top
What's not going to happen on December 21: This. So you can go back to planning New Year's. Picture: Courtesy of Columbia Source: news.com.au An artist's reconstruction of a wall scrawled with painted figures. Picture: H Hurst Source: news.com.au Glyphs found on wall predate Dresden Codex Count out 7000-year calendar Better luck next time, Armageddon fans IN a jungle one day, in a land far away, a man found a house. In the house there was a room. In the room there were some numbers... and that's about as close to story time as you're going to get here. Including any fantasy that the world is going to end in 2012. A new find at the Guatemalan Maya site Xultún has all but put paid to the myth that the Mayan calendar runs out on December 21, 2012. In a recently excavated house, archaeologists have found one wall scrawled with hundreds of numbers, which the team says relate to the Mayan calendar. The tiny, millimetre-thick, red and black glyphs are "unlike any seen before" at other Maya sites. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation, said. "It's like an episode of TV's Big Bang Theory, a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard." The only other time the glyphs have been spotted is in the Dresden Codex, a book famed for its astrological accuracy which was written several hundred years after the words were painted on the walls of the Xultún complex. Among the glyphs, the team spotted references to the four Maya calenders - the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars. Four long numbers on the wall represent 300,000-2.5 million days which seem to bring together all of the astronomical cycles the Maya thought important. Mayan wall In a recently excavated house, archaeologists found one wall with scrawled hundreds of numbers, which the team says relate to the Mayan calendar. Picture: W Saturno And here's the sad bit for the conspiracy theorists - the dates stretch some 7000 years into the future. Xultún is the first place Maya archaeologists have found that seems to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. And no, the site isn't 7000 years old - a number scratched into the plaster likely records the date at 813 A.D., just as the Maya world began to collapse. Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, says all the signs point to the much less Hollywood belief held by academia that 2012 signals the end of just one of the ancient civilisation's calendar cycles. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," Prof Aveni said. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over." The complex the house sits in was discovered about 100 years ago and was home to tens of thousands, the team said. Its discoverer, Sylvanus Morley, named the site Xultún, meaning "end stone". It wasn't mapped until the 1970s and the house in which the glyphs were found was number 54 of the 56 verified. Remarkably, it sat just a metre below the surface, a fact which helped Prof Saturno's student Max Chamberlain discover it by following looter's tunnels in 2010. "It's weird that the Xultún finds exist at all," Prof Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a metre below the surface." Bah. Back to the drawing board, Hollywood. 8012 just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Ancient Mayan workshop for astronomers discovered 05/10/2012 AOL News Malcolm Ritter	Return to Top
NEW YORK -Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at that time, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later. Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has gotten some attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say it makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: The calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years it could extend well beyond 2012. "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year?" observed Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy. "You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on." Aveni, along with William Saturno of Boston University and others, report the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The room, a bit bigger than 6-feet square, is part of a large complex of Mayan ruins in the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. The walls also contain portraits of a seated king and some other figures, but it's clear those have no connection to the astronomical writings, the scientists said. One wall contains a calendar based on phases of the moon, covering about 13 years. The researchers said they think it might have been used to keep track of which deity was overseeing the moon at particular times. Aveni said it would allow scribes to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance, for example. Such record-keeping was key to Mayan astrology and rituals, and maybe would be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be, he said. "`What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," he said. On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the scribes were doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Maybe the scribes were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society," Aveni suggested. Experts unconnected with the discovery said it was a significant advance. "It's really a wonderful surprise," said Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While the results of the scribes' work were known from carvings on monuments, "we've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things," Martin said. The new work gives insight into that, he said, and the fact the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the scribes enjoyed a high social standing. "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of it" in the published paper, said John B. Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md. "This is an intriguing start for this discovery."— Online: Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org— Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter

Good news! National Geographic says Mayan calendar goes well beyond Dec. 21, 2012 05/10/2012 al.com Debbie M. Lord	Return to Top
By Debbie M. Lord, Press-Register If you were planning on blowing your savings in anticipation of the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012, you may want to think again. According to a press release from the National Geographic Society, painted numbers on a house built by the Maya in Guatemala and discovered nearly a century ago, suggests that the famed Mayan calendar has days reaching well beyond 2012. Well beyond. In recent years, the calendar has gotten a lot of attention with many thinking the end of the current cycle (Dec. 21, 2012) meant the end of the world. According to the press release, archaeologists uncovered a structure in Guatemala that contains what appears to be a work space for the town's scribe, its walls adorned with unique paintings — one depicting a lineup of men in black uniforms — and hundreds of scrawled numbers. Many are calculations relating to the Maya calendar, researchers say. One wall of the structure is covered with tiny, millimeter-thick, red and black glyphs unlike any seen before at other Maya sites, the release says. The discovery is reported in the June issue of National Geographic magazine and in the May 11 issue of the journal Science. The project scientists say that despite popular belief, there is no sign that the Maya calendar — or the world — was to end in the year 2012, just one of its calendar cycles. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University and a coauthor of the Science paper was quoted as saying. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over." Below, is a video about the project: Related topics: 2012, Dec. 21, Mayan calendar

Wait, the Mayans said 8012, not 2012 05/10/2012 AdelaideNow	Return to Top
Adelaide Now Last updated: May 11, 2012 Weather: Adelaide 11°C - 18°C . Shower or two. The painted figure of a man through the doorway of an ancient dwelling in the Maya city Zultun in northeastern Guatemala. Archaeologists have found the small room where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society's intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. AP / National Geographic, Tyrone Turner Source: AdelaideNow Glyphs found on wall predate Dresden Codex Count out 7000-year calendar A NEW find at the Guatemalan Maya site Xultún has all but put paid to the myth that the Mayan calendar runs out on December 21, 2012. In a recently excavated house, archaeologists have found one wall scrawled with hundreds of numbers, which the team says relate to the Mayan calendar. The tiny, millimetre-thick, red and black glyphs are "unlike any seen before" at other Maya sites. "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community," archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation, said. "It's like an episode of TV's Big Bang Theory, a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard." The only other time the glyphs have been spotted is in the Dresden Codex, a book famed for its astrological accuracy which was written several hundred years after the words were painted on the walls of the XultÚn complex. Among the glyphs, the team spotted references to the four Maya calenders - the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars. Four long numbers on the wall represent 300,000-2.5 million days which seem to bring together all of the astronomical cycles the Maya thought important. Mayan wall In a recently excavated house, archaeologists found one wall with scrawled hundreds of numbers, which the team says relate to the Mayan calendar. Picture: W Saturno Source: news.com.au And here's the sad bit for the conspiracy theorists - the dates stretch some 7000 years into the future. XultÚn is the first place Maya archaeologists have found that seems to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. And no, the site isn't 7000 years old - a number scratched into the plaster likely records the date at 813 A.D., just as the Maya world began to collapse. Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, says all the signs point to the much less Hollywood belief held by academia that 2012 signals the end of just one of the ancient civilisation's calendar cycles. "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000," Prof Aveni said. "The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over." The complex the house sits in was discovered about 100 years ago and was home to tens of thousands, the team said. Its discoverer, Sylvanus Morley, named the site XultÚn, meaning "end stone". Mayan Astronomers Conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Maya house that dates to the 9th century A.D. in the Maya city Zultun in northeastern Guatemala. AP / National Geographic, Tyrone Turner Source: AdelaideNow It wasn't mapped until the 1970s and the house in which the glyphs were found was number 54 of the 56 verified. Remarkably, it sat just a metre below the surface, a fact which helped Prof Saturno's student Max Chamberlain discover it by following looter's tunnels in 2010. "It's weird that the XultÚn finds exist at all," Prof Saturno said. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a metre below the surface." Bah. Back to the drawing board, Hollywood. 8012 just doesn't have the same ring to it.

The amazing Maya 05/07/2012 philly.com	Return to Top
The world likely won't end Dec. 21. But they had advanced ideas on time. A replica of Stela A, Copan, Honduras, from an… (MICHAEL…) New Age mystics predict that December's turnover of the sacred Mayan calendar will bring death by flood, solar flares, or a catastrophic reversal of the Earth's magnetic field. Some even forecast that Earth will plunge into a gigantic black hole. But don't bet the farm on it, say archaeologists. This creative doom-saying stems from a calculation that archaeologist made in the 1980s, showing that the ancient Mayan timekeeping system was going to end, or cycle back to zero, for the first time since 3114 B.C. The date for this turnover - December 21, 2012 - is now known to the apocalyptically minded as Y12. It raises the question: Could God's odometer be running out? Archaeologists who have studied Mayan culture say the calendar won't end or go back to zero but extends for trillions of years into the future. Either way, there was never an end-of-the-world prophecy. "It's misunderstanding on top of incomprehension on top of fooling yourself," said archaeologist Simon Martin of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Still, archaeologists are seizing this as a teachable moment when they can share what's known about the Maya and their remarkable achievements in astronomy, math and timekeeping. These people of the Yucatan in southeastern Mexico and parts of Central America predicted lunar and solar eclipses and streamlined mathematics with the invention of zero while Europe was mired in the dark ages and struggling with cumbersome Roman numerals. On May 5-6, the Penn Museum's annual Maya Weekend will focus on the calendar and coincide with the opening of an exhibit called Maya 2012: Lords of Time. To understand the Mayan calendar, Martin said, it helps to realize their counting system was base 20 - meaning they had 20 numerals (including zero) rather than 10. While we mark time in weeks, they marked it in periods of 20 days. They gave a name to each day of these 20-day periods, just as we do our days of the week. They revered the number 13, and so they marked a "sacred round" that lasted 13 of these 20 day periods, or 260 days. They also understood the year, which is rooted in astronomy, said Anthony Aveni, a professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University and a speaker at the Penn Museum event. Aveni wrote a book about the Mayan calendar called The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012, which debunks the end-of-the-world hype and outlines what's known about the Maya, who thrived between 250 AD and 900 AD. For decades, the Maya tracked the paths of the sun, moon, Venus and Mars until they could precisely predict eclipses and the positions of our neighboring planets. Pop culture books have attributed these feats to help from aliens, which Aveni thinks reflects a lack of respect for the intellectual powers of indigenous cultures. Learning about Mayan astronomy was a revelation, he said. He had assumed Mayan astronomers were trying to understand the universe the same way he was. Did the Maya know that the planets and Earth orbited the sun? Did they realize the sun was a star in the Milky Way? He realized those weren't important questions to them. The Maya understood that a solar year was a little longer than 365 days, he said, but they never added an extra day each leap year as we do. Instead, they let holidays drift around the calendar. When it came to time, they were more concerned with cycles of 20 and 13, said Aveni. For longer-term calculations, they used what archaeologists call the "long count." It started with units of 360 days called Tuns. Twenty tuns made up a katoun, and 20 of those make a baktun. Thirteen baktuns made up a creation period - 5,125 years and 133.7 days. The 2012 date comes from the fact that the Maya set the current cycle to begin in 3114 B.C. Nobody is sure why this date was chosen. It predates Mayan civilization but may represent some round unit of Mayan time projected back from a date in their history, the way we count from the birth of Jesus. On Dec. 21, or 23 depending on the calculation, the current cycle will end, and Mayan time will enter a new period, said archaeologist David Stuart from the University of Texas, another speaker this weekend at the Penn Museum. He's found evidence that there are more digits to the left in the Mayan odometer, allowing orders-of-magnitude more years. "They were placing human time in this vast system with octillions of years in the past and octillions of years in the future," he said. "This is the biggest expression of time conceived by a human culture." To Colgate's Aveni, the end-of-the-world hype comes from our projecting a Judeo-Christian worldview on Mayan timekeeping. "There's no evidence in Maya records that says much of anything about 2012, much less that it's the end of the world," he said. But the Maya did appreciate milestones in time. The solar year and their sacred 260-day cycle lined up for them every 52 years, and there's some evidence they saw this as a reason to party. They would have recognized the epoch-ending 2012 date as significant too, said Stuart. "It is an important date and it's very cosmic" even if their exact views remain a mystery. Contact Faye Flam at 215-854-4977 or fflam@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @fayeflam. Read her blog at philly.com/evolution.