Read Online Our Cosmic Ancestors by Maurice Chatelain - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Maurice Chatelain
Tags: Fiction, General, Social Science, Prehistoric peoples, Occult & Supernatural, Anthropology, Interplanetary voyages, Body; Mind & Spirit, UFOs & Extraterrestrials, Civilization; Ancient, History; Ancient
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ancestors knew about the existence of Proserpine any more than it explains who told them that Mars has two satellites, Jupiter four, Saturn seven, and Uranus two. And how did the Dogons, a primitive tribe of Mali, know that an enormous planet circles around the star Sirius, with a revolution period of fifty years? I certainly do not want to give the impression that I am entirely devoted to extraterrestrial civilizations and flying saucers; but in all honesty, one has to wonder how our distant ancestors of the Stone Age could possibly have had all of this knowledge of astronomy and mathematics? They could not have found It all by themselves. Somebody had to have helped them, a god or an astronaut.
THE MAYAN CALENDAR
The mystery of the Mayan calendar has always been a hotly disputed subject among archaeologists. Everyone had his own theory and defended it firmly. But most of the time this dispute went on between the French and the German archaeologists and that is probably one of the reasons why I became interested. The situation was complicated by the fact that there were two Mayan calendars - one that was quite well known and another that no one had yet deciphered.
To measure short time spans, the Mayas used a cycle of 104 years and this cycle was well known and accepted so that everybody could agree on it. This cycle of 104 years or 37,960 days represented for the Mayan astronomers 1,285 cycles of the Moon, 327 cycles of Mercury, 219 cycles of eclipses, 146 sacred years, 104 profane years, 65 cycles of Venus, and 48 2/3 cycles of Mars.
The Mayas celebrated in a very original way, the meeting of 73 sacred years with 52 profane years. They extinguished all the fires in the household, smashed all the pots and pans in the kitchen, and sat up all night long in fear and trepidation that the end of the world might be there and that they might never see the Sun again. When nevertheless the Sun rose again in the morning and the Mayas had to acknowledge that the world was still there, they relit their fires and sacrificed a few virgins and prisoners and went back happily to enjoy life for another 52 years. Evidently, every 104 years, when the planets Mercury and Venus were in conjunction with the Sun, and especially every 312 years, when Mars joined the group, the celebration was even bigger and the number of virgins and prisoners sacrificed was substantially increased.
To compute long periods of time and to make astronomical calculations, the Mayas used a calendar that was based on the Great Cycle
- a period of time that was not precisely known to our scientists. It was vaguely thought that the last cycle had started about 3,000 years before Christ. It was also thought that this cycle had to run out soon. Finally, it was assumed that this long span was divided in cycles a little shorter than twenty years each. For this very scant knowledge we have to thank the bishop of Yucatan, Diego de Landa, who in 1549 ordered all the ancient Mayan documents and manuscripts to be publicly burned because he could not understand these treasures. To him they were the work of Satan.
Anyone who wants to tackle the mystery of the Mayan calendar today has to solve three different problems: the staffing date of this calendar, the length of the time span this calendar covered, and the duration of its short cycles. Opinions on all three questions differ widely. Originally, the dates proposed for the start of this long calendar were as much as 520 years apart. Recently this discrepancy has been reduced to 260 years and there are only two groups of American archaeologists who dispute each other. The team led by Herbert Spinden maintains that the long Mayan calendar started in 3373 BC. The team led by Edward Thompson thinks it began in 3113 BC. As the Mayas counted time, this 260 year difference represents thirteen periods of 20 years each that are called 'katuns'. Twenty katuns, or 400 years, are equal to one 'baktun'.
The duration of the Mayan long
THE MAYAN CALENDAR
The mystery of the Mayan calendar has always been a hotly disputed subject among archaeologists. Everyone had his own theory and defended it firmly. But most of the time this dispute went on between the French and the German archaeologists and that is probably one of the reasons why I became interested. The situation was complicated by the fact that there were two Mayan calendars - one that was quite well known and another that no one had yet deciphered.
To measure short time spans, the Mayas used a cycle of 104 years and this cycle was well known and accepted so that everybody could agree on it. This cycle of 104 years or 37,960 days represented for the Mayan astronomers 1,285 cycles of the Moon, 327 cycles of Mercury, 219 cycles of eclipses, 146 sacred years, 104 profane years, 65 cycles of Venus, and 48 2/3 cycles of Mars.
The Mayas celebrated in a very original way, the meeting of 73 sacred years with 52 profane years. They extinguished all the fires in the household, smashed all the pots and pans in the kitchen, and sat up all night long in fear and trepidation that the end of the world might be there and that they might never see the Sun again. When nevertheless the Sun rose again in the morning and the Mayas had to acknowledge that the world was still there, they relit their fires and sacrificed a few virgins and prisoners and went back happily to enjoy life for another 52 years. Evidently, every 104 years, when the planets Mercury and Venus were in conjunction with the Sun, and especially every 312 years, when Mars joined the group, the celebration was even bigger and the number of virgins and prisoners sacrificed was substantially increased.
To compute long periods of time and to make astronomical calculations, the Mayas used a calendar that was based on the Great Cycle
- a period of time that was not precisely known to our scientists. It was vaguely thought that the last cycle had started about 3,000 years before Christ. It was also thought that this cycle had to run out soon. Finally, it was assumed that this long span was divided in cycles a little shorter than twenty years each. For this very scant knowledge we have to thank the bishop of Yucatan, Diego de Landa, who in 1549 ordered all the ancient Mayan documents and manuscripts to be publicly burned because he could not understand these treasures. To him they were the work of Satan.
Anyone who wants to tackle the mystery of the Mayan calendar today has to solve three different problems: the staffing date of this calendar, the length of the time span this calendar covered, and the duration of its short cycles. Opinions on all three questions differ widely. Originally, the dates proposed for the start of this long calendar were as much as 520 years apart. Recently this discrepancy has been reduced to 260 years and there are only two groups of American archaeologists who dispute each other. The team led by Herbert Spinden maintains that the long Mayan calendar started in 3373 BC. The team led by Edward Thompson thinks it began in 3113 BC. As the Mayas counted time, this 260 year difference represents thirteen periods of 20 years each that are called 'katuns'. Twenty katuns, or 400 years, are equal to one 'baktun'.
The duration of the Mayan long
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