Originally Posted by Capt Kirk
I can't believe I am going to weigh in on this but I have read the whole thing and actually followed a bunch of the links, so here we go....
1.There will absolutely be a cosmic alignment of some sort on Dec 21 2012, and it will be a huge deal, Major event not a doubt in my mind.( that is if we are correct on syncing )
2. The Maya were amazing astronomers and brilliant calendar makers. They understood things that we are only recently able to understand and their understanding of the scale of time was way beyond what was contemporary.
This is super huge if you are an Ancient Maya(AM), has about zero meaning for the rest of us, except the chance for a little humility on the modern worlds part, more on that in a sec.
Alignment. Yep it is going to happen but unless you are AM astronomer you probably don't know what to look for, modern example, the debate as to beginning of Ramadan.
Big Deal. Are you kidding me, hell yeah, we are starting a new Batun(sp?). "We are going to out party 1999, come on that was a millennium, this is a whole calendar reset" but only if you are an AM
Amazing. Not really and absolutely, Calendars serve several important functions, a few being; basic time keeping, agriculture and culture. Almost all terrestrial calendars use the same basic unit the Year appx 365 days, so almost every calendar is easily synced, some math might be needed. Agriculture requires us to subdivide our year so we know when to plant, there are some convenient markers that are easily measured without complex instruments, although writing helps, the moon cycle and equinoxes. You now have the tools to use a correctable calendar, you can begin with a small circle of stones and a stick and refine from there, in a few generations you end up with something far more complex, through observation, and this is where culture plays a huge part. A calendar tells you when to pray, what to eat, when to worship, who to worship, when to work, when to sit idle, when/what to remember, when to give etc. besides all the agricultural timing. Something in AM culture made it important to think in the long scale/long cycle so their culture evolved the Long Count Calendar. I have no idea what would make anyone think on a scale of 52,000 times their lifespan, but obviously they did, how many lifetimes did that take? Kudos to the AM for their awesome math and observational skills, but does this matter to us, not a bit. A big calendar event aligning with an equinox, it would be weird if it did not. Think about it or convert 12.21.2012 into an Islamic of Jewish calendar and go into a number frenzy over that, because the year date is irrelevant. In fact it is rather arbitrary, virtually no one believes JC was born 12.25.0000 and no one cares because where you start is completely unimportant, it is just a reference point.
Humility. Us moderns IMO have a tendency to think we are smarter than the ancients were, that because they knew less than we do they were not as smart, this is just flat out wrong. Modern Humans have been just about the same for at least 100,000 years(general consensus everyone?), same people same motivations and desires(generally). They also lived in a modern developing world, albeit more slowly. Oh lets have an example, go down to your local Home improvement center, go to the tool section, look for the measurement devices, pick up a water level, oogle that amazing piece of technology, invented at least 5000 years ago, probably used it while building the Pyramids of Egypt, in all that time all we have done to improve that tool is better materials and a digital readout, same friggin tool.
More Humility. Ancients built the same way we do now, it was just harder and took longer, they planned for this. Look at the castles and churches of Europe, some of them took hundreds of years to build, the guys who drew up the original plans knew their great grand children would still be working on it, oh BTW, does anybody know who built the Empire State Building(no google fu), but everyone knows The great Pyramid of Cheops, yep the people who do the work rarely get the credit. Some things never change. If there was a plaque with the builders name on it, it was in small type.
Just a little more of this......
Scene)
Puma Punku, our jewel in the green desert, transition stage between 2nd and 3rd construction stages, in the market place, early evening
(Enter Bob)
Narrator: "Bob is in trouble, the Temple walls are separating and the King is displeased, Bob's great great grandfather learned how to make the flat exact stones of the first Temple and his family has been the builder for the king ever since, to keep his head and his childrens jobs, he needs a solution in 5 or 10 years. He paces the marketplace to clear his mind."
(Enter Jim) A jeweler
(J)"Bob come here I want to show you something in my shop"
(B)"Sure Jim I need the distraction, I have had a bad day"
(J)"More trouble with the wife? I have something for that."
(B)"Not that, she doesn't know about the GF yet, what did you want to show me?"
(J)" You know the shiny jewelry I make out of the rocks around here, by melting, well I wanted to make some more complex shapes but the Metal, that is what I am calling it now by the way, wasn't stiff enough to keep its shape so I found a different rock that that made metal too, but it was an ugly color and brittle. So I mixed them and check this out"
Jim displays a small T shaped piece, silver/copper colored and hands it to Bob
(J) "I made the shape in the wet sand and poured the metal in, awesome eh', try to hurt it, you can't break it"
(B) "Wait you poured it into a hole that was T shaped? Why cant I bend this, it is the size of a small twig, is this magic?"
(J) " Please don't accuse me of sorcery, I have enough problems, with the wife dead and the boys in the army, and the unmarriable daughter at home, oy vey, I hope to make enough from this Metal to buy her a dowry and marry that wretched girl off"
(B)(DING) "Er Jim you know, eh you think you can make shapes inside stone? Because this kinda looks like the shape of the wood blocks my Grandfather used to hold the original Temple blocks together, you remember I told you about watering against rot as my first Temple job"
(J) "Yes I can make them in stone, I tried it out on those bad blocks you gave me from the cutters shop, I was just about to show you, funny thing I have to break the stone to get them out"
Lights fade
The End
I know that is completely hypothetical, but problems are made to be solved, if you still need proof, while you are in the tool aisle...... Look at the hatchets and axes
We have never needed the intervention of the gods/aliens/angels etc, we have used what mankind has always done when something needs to get done, ingenuity and hard work. Don't make it complicated
CAPT
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06-26-2012, 02:22 AM
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