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UT-Austin researchers discover oldest known Mayan calendar

 

 

 

 

 

Rylie Lillibridge, Senior News Reporter

January 16, 2023

 

A global research team partly consisting of UT-Austin scholars discovered direct evidence of the oldest known Maya calendar dating back to 300 B.C, much older than previously discovered fragments dating between 300 and 900 A.D.

Pieces of painted plaster were discovered at an excavation site in San Bartolo, Guatemala. David Stuart, an art history professor and member of the team who made the discovery, said the San Bartolo site is well known in the study of Maya art and archaeology due to the presence of notable wall paintings. In this excavation, the team dug into layers of the site that were much deeper than previous discoveries.

“Among the fragments was a little piece of plaster (that) was part of the wall and some black lines,” Stuart said. “When I saw them I said, ‘Oh, well, there you have a Maya calendar record,’ and it was very readable.”

The fragments were discovered using light detection and ranging or LIDAR, a laser technology used for land surveying.

“(LIDAR) has really reshaped Maya archaeology and the way that we understand the Maya and now other parts of ancient Mesoamerica as well,” said Tom Garrison, assistant professor in the department of geography and the environment. “(It can) let us digitally deforest the landscape and see this basically preserved ancient landscape underneath.” 

The fragments contain the words “7 Deer,” which is the name of one of the days in the 260-day Maya calendar cycle. Stuart said the 260-day cycle is a fundamental part of Mesoamerican culture that stems from the multiplication of 13 and 20, two sacred numbers for the Maya. The Maya used 20 as the base for their counting system, and the significance of 13 is most likely linked to the amount of lunar months in a year.

“This would now be the oldest example of a Maya date recorded in any kind of medium,” Stuart said. “It’s probably a ceremonial day, it might be related to the days on which the solar year begins; it could be a lot of different things.”

In order to assign dates to the discovered fragments, they were compared to samples of organic material found in excavations through a process known as radiocarbon dating. Researchers measure the amount of carbon-14, a form of carbon that organisms absorb throughout their lifetime, that is still remaining in order to know how old the organic material is. When an organism dies, the carbon-14 keeps decaying. 

The team has excavated most of the building where the calendar was found and is continuing to work in the San Bartolo region. Stuart said that the discovery will contribute to increased interest and education about the Maya calendar, which has often been shrouded in superstition.

“This particular way of counting days, in the 260 days system, survived the Spanish invasion and the conquest, and it was maintained very much in secret up to the present day,” Stuart said. “It’s not a revival. It’s actually a survival of the Mesoamerican past; that’s really extraordinary.” 

 

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5 Explorers Who May Have Actually Discovered America (Before Columbus)

 

 

 

In 1933, archaeologist José García Payón unearthed a small terracotta statue head from an archeology site in Calixtlahuaca, Mexico, and the groundbreaking discovery suggested ancient European civilizations might have reached the Americas centuries before Columbus. The artifact’s appearance was intriguing, to say the least; its face was bearded, with distinctly foreign characteristics and wearing a shortened cap. The terracotta head was found under three intact floors of a pre-Columbian pyramid structure. Along with the head were several objects made of gold, copper, turquoise, rock crystal, jet, bone, shell, and pottery. The burial site where the discovery was made was dated between 1476 and 1510 AD. In 1960, García Payón granted the statue to the National Autonomous University of Mexico to undergo further research. Specialists Romeo H. Hristov and Santiago Genovés studied the ancient statue and even sent it to Bernard Andreae, a German Institute of Archaeology director emeritus in Rome, Italy, who confirmed the small head was a Roman work from the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD. Andreae concluded: (QUOTE) “[The head] is without any doubt Roman, and the lab analysis has confirmed that it is ancient. The stylistic examination tells us more precisely that it is a Roman work from around the 2nd century AD, and the hairstyle and the shape of the beard present the typical traits of the Severian emperors’ period.” How exactly could an ancient roman figurine end up in a sealed pre-Columbian burial site is still up for debate. Most world-renowned archaeologists and experts agree that the discovery is probably an elaborate hoax, and that perhaps the head was placed in the ruins during the Spanish occupation of Mexico. Those supporting the hoax hypothesis cite the lack of archaeological rigor while documenting the discovery and the 30-year lapse between the discovery and the initial research. However, a minority of experts, including Romeo H. Hristov, argue that the most likely explanation is the drifting of a Roman, Phoenician, or Berber ship to American shores. Hristov claims that the likelihood of such an event is not far-fetched and is supported by the extensive evidence of Roman travels in the 6th or 5th centuries BC to Tenerife and Lanzarote in the Canaries. Thus, a lost Roman ship drifting into Mexico is entirely plausible. Another possibility is human error, as archeological standards in 1930s Mexico were considerably less rigorous than they are today. Still, there is no way to definitively disprove that ancient Romans arrived in Mexico many centuries before Christopher Columbus took the credit for discovering America...

 

 

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