AN ARCHAEOLOGIST revealed the Mayan civilisation’s real predictions over the end of the world, after uncovering inscriptions on an ancient stone slate, a documentary revealed.
The Mayans were a civilisation known for their architecture, mathematics and astronomical beliefs, who date back to as far as 2000BC. In 2012, there was a brief frenzy after it was claimed that December 21 would mark the end of the world because it was the end-date of a 5,126-year cycle on the Mayan calendar. However, thanks to the discovery on a stone slate in Tikal, Guatemala, archaeologists are able to understand more about this key date, as well as the apparent end of the world.
Stanley Guenter, a world-leading decoder of Mayan inscriptions, revealed during Morgan Freeman’s “The Story of God” how the Mayans depicted their calendars on stelae – huge slabs of rock.
He said in 2017: “Stelae commemorate periods in the Mayan calendar, so we see that they would have been dedicated to periods of time such as every 20 years, every 10 years and especially every 400 years.
“[These were known as] the ending of the great b’ak’tun cycles.
“So we heard a few years ago about the end of the 13th b’ak’tun being the end of the world predicted by the Mayans.
“Well there’s a monument down here I think we should take a look at.”
Mr Guenter then took Mr Freeman to see stela 10, which was referenced to apparently marking the end of the world seven years ago.
He added: “This is stela 10, you can see we’ve got a king – there is his head and big headdress full of feathers, [his] shoulders, all of his jewellery and down to his feet.
“If you look down below, we can actually see we have a captive and we can see his hands and even legs – all tied up for sacrifice.
“[On the back] we have a date that gives us a specific point in time – 11 years and 360 days, then we have three katuns – which are 20 years each.
“So that is another 60, and then we have nine b’ak’tuns, because this is a date of about 525AD.
“So if you remember we had 13 b’ak’tuns ended in 2012, but the really interesting thing is the monument does not stop there.”
Mr Guenter then went on to reveal how the entirety of the discovery reveals the 2012 prediction was just a single cycle inside a number of bigger cycles.
He continued: “It tells us there were 19 of the higher unit – the pictun – and even higher, 11 at the next unit.
“Each one of those units is 20 times larger than the previous, so what we see on this monument is that 13 b’ak’tuns was not the end of any calendar – just one cycle.
“It was just the start of a new cycle, a new beginning, that would go on for almost eternity.
“We have never found the end for the Mayans.”