Archeologist discovered a new Mayan structure in 2010 located in Guatemala, but only recently were able to excavate the area after funding from National Geographic. The structure had long been filled in by dirt, helping to preserve the painted walls inside.
Max Chamberlain discovered the location buried deep inside a jungle in Guatemala in an acient area of the Mayan city, Xultun, and after entering found various red and black dotted lines, along with a table drawn on a wall that was divided into 27 columns, each representing six lunar months. Atop each column was either a jaguar, a skull or a woman, all considered mood gods in Mayan culture. Also found was a very well kept drawing of a Mayan king adorned with feathers and jewelry.
David Stuart, considered a Mayan expert, contends that the table clearly shows that the Mayan calendar does not end on December 21 (or Dec 23 depending on the interpretation) and that that calendar goes on for at least another 4,784 days or 13 years, which is the Mayan moon cycle.
“It’s really cool because it shows us the tools the ancient astronomers and priests were using to do their calculations,” Stuart said.
On another wall was a set of four columns which puzzled Stuart, but eventually he learned it was how long it takes Mars and Venus to cross the sky and come back again. This calendar spans some 7,000 years — heading much farther into the future than the supposed doomsday date.
Before the new find, the best-preserved Mayan calendars were inscribed in bark-paged books called codices, the most famous being the Dresden Codex. But those pages hail from several hundred years later than the newly found calendars.
The Mayan culture was famed for ruling the Central American area for over 1,000 years and known to be precise in keeping time, both past and future and were able to accurately predict the movements of heavily bodies like the moon, Venus and Mars with an accuracy rivaled by today's modern astronomy.
The Mayan calendar is a series of cycles lasting just shy of 5,000 years, and the last known one abruptly ended in 2012. This gave pop culture the speculation that the earth would end in 2012 and fed into other astronomical research to discover that on December 21, 2012 the planets of our solar system will align perfectly pointing towards the center of the solar system, a very rare event that happens once every 25,000 years, give or take a couple years. The alignment of the planets is thought to have extra-special gravitational effects, however most astronomers and Geo-physisict say they don't expect anything unusual as a result of the alignment.
HOAX OR REAL?
Already, nay-sayers and conspiracy theorist have cried foul, saying in part that the discovery was conveniently found and suspiciously timed and point out that even if the find is real, the calendar is older than the newer and revised Mayan dooms-day calender that was found showing the end and that it could be wrong as a result. Additionally, they say since it was not located in a public square like others, it could be the artistic drawings of someone not considered valid or correct.
"Just because you find something from a long time ago, doesn't make it authentic or real when trying to interpret what was real in the past" says Jean Hampton on a post on a popular web forum. She points out that you can write something that is completely false, bury it, and in a thousand years an archeologist could find it, but finding it does not mean what you wrote is really what was happening.
Either way, regardless of which way you believe, it does not seem to have impacted "End Of The World Parties", with over 1,000 planned so far in just the United States.