Mayan calender replica end of days

[billybria]

I hunt storages for a living and I amgetting kind of curious on why Mayan stuff is randomly popping up in 2012 lol but im loving the finds, take a look and give an opinion! Hope yall like cuz I treated into joy once I found it cuz i knew exactly what I was looking at! Price range too please!

[billybria]

And in all the cracks are thick lint looking dust?? Maybe its an old replica?

[G10+]

way out of my leage,,, but would love to read what others have to say

[Geonoob]

oooooh I love that. Mayan calendrics was one of the 1st things I started studying when I got into Ancient history. Thats the Tzolkin calendar, based on venus its a 260 day holy calendar. Alot of the ritualistic stuff was based on what the Tzolkin considered "sacred" days.. some good, some not. Either way its a sweet reproduction. Idk how much its worth but when you find out let us know.
I'll trade ya legit artifacts for it!  B)

[CliffJ]

That is a replica of the Aztec Sun Stone found in central Mexico City. The original is 12' across.
I expect there have been many thousand replicas like that made. How wide is yours? Mine is around 16" or so and I think I gave $12 at the flea market ten years ago. They had some copper-stained lokking like yours, or bone/stained which I got.

[painshill]

It is exactly as Ray says [correction: apologies... I did of course mean "Cliff" and not Ray]. The 25 ton original was carved in 1479 in the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, buried during the Spanish conquest and rediscovered in what is now Mexico City in 1790. As such, it’s an Aztec “tonalpohualli” calendar rather than a Mayan “Tzolk'in”.
Many such replicas exist and I would agree that its value is probably minimal, although it depends to some extent on whether it is carved or moulded (ie mass-produced) and also its size. Mass-produced ceramic examples are often coloured to look like stone. You can buy 10inch “artist-signed” replicas claimed to be carved (more likely moulded and hand finished) on Amazon for $65 and mass-produced unsigned ones for a lot less. Yours has nothing like the same high-relief present in the original carving, and I would guess it’s probably moulded.

[Geonoob]

Schooled! hehe, I actually thought it was Mayan.. you guys are on top of your game no doubt, I

[billybria]

Thank u guys for the help! I didn't even know the Aztecs had a calendar. Was the Aztec calander the inspiration for the Mayans calander? Or did the two tribes have no connection? Ive always been intrigued by the Mayans and their precise predictions of celestial events and prophecys by knowing and understanding the events and actions of the stars and actions in the cosmos. There understandings were way ahead of their time tat astronomers today cant believe they were so precise to celestial events that were predicted years before it happened. Did the Aztecs study the cosmos first and hand down their studies to there family and they weresoon to be Mayans and the Mayans added to the calander with more complex understandings of learning over the years? Or did the two tribes have no relation and when the Aztec died off or went separate ways the Mayan settled there and stumbled across their relics?

[billybria]

The calander is made with green, white, and blue little litter rock shards, maybe marble? and im sure it was moulded I doubt you could carve that material in good detail like that u would have to be good. The rivets are pretty deep and full of dust lol ill take a picture of the back and post it

[painshill]

billybria wrote:

The calander is made with green, white, and blue little litter rock shards, maybe marble? and im sure it was moulded I doubt you could carve that material in good detail like that u would have to be good. The rivets are pretty deep and full of dust lol ill take a picture of the back and post it

I would guess it might be composite "stone"... rock ground up and mixed with modern resin.

As for the other question:

Meso-American (pre-Columbian) calendars are complicated. It is at least clear that most cultures used several different types of calendars simultaneously… but for different purposes. Time was measured on short cycles for things like prediction of childbirth and managing the next year’s crop planting or harvesting; or longer cycles for religious purposes, sacrifices, the election of new Kings and the planning of wars. The various calendars embrace the concept of time on a seasonal basis, on a relative basis and an absolute day-by-day progression from a fixed start point.

All Mesoamerican cultures seem to have had a 260-day ritual calendar with no confirmed correlation to astronomy or agriculture, and what is known as a “vague year” calendar which was based on the solar year of 360 days plus 5 “extra” days, making 365. The latter calendar was approximate (because of what we now call leap years) and would have needed frequent correction but it seems they never bothered to do this… allowing for the discrepancies in other ways. Reading the two calendars in conjunction identified a specific day, but not a specific year over periods longer than 52 years since the two calendars became temporarily synchronised on a 52 year cycle.

The third major calendar is known as the “Long Count” and was most notably used by the Maya. It starts with a mythical “creation date” (and the Maya believed there had been more than one creation) and uniquely defines sequential days over much longer time periods - roughly 5,125 solar years. The Mayans had the most sophisticated (ie complicated) systems and also simultaneously used a 584-day “Venus cycle” to plan good days for particular activities and a 819-day cycle of unknown origin or purpose.

Every culture seems to have a customised version of the 260-day calendar and these presumably have a common origin, which is not known – but certainly ancient and perhaps from the Olmec. The Aztec version is known as the “tonalpohualli” and is the equivalent of the much earlier Mayan “Tzolk'in”. It’s neither solar nor lunar and has been variously suggested as derived from the cycle of Venus, related to the number of days when the sun is not directly overhead, represents the human menstrual/gestation cycle, or even that it’s purely mathematical and based on the Meso-American “magic” numbers 13 and 20 (since the calendar is divided into 13 periods of 20 days). The 365-day solar cycle is known as the “haab’” in Mayan culture and the “xiuhpohualli” in Aztec culture. It’s normally the “glyphs” used to represent the days that identify the culture, since the mathematical or astronomical basis for the calendars is common across all cultures.

What is known as the Mayan “long count” calendar “ends” at 20th December this year (on our calendar) and there has been a lot of hoo-hah in the press about this signifying a prediction of the end of the world by the Maya. That’s complete rubbish. For the Maya, it would have been an auspicious day representing the end of a cycle… but they would have simply started a new cycle on the next day. You might like to dig out that tinfoil hat just in case. :laugh:

[billybria]

Haha ya were gonna get sucked to outer space!!! Lol, that was a awesome read! I got some questions!  Where the aztecs here before the mayas or did they ever encopaunter each other? And does the tonalpohualli say that the new beginning is coming like the tzolk'in?

[billybria]

The back of the piece, and what do the Aztecs with water coming out their mouth mean?

[Bone2stone]

[QUOTE]painshill wrote:

The calander is made with green, white, and blue little litter rock shards, maybe marble? and im sure it was moulded I doubt you could carve that material in good detail like that u would have to be good. The rivets are pretty deep and full of dust lol ill take a picture of the back and post it

I would guess it might be composite "stone"... rock ground up and mixed with modern resin.
As for the other question:
Meso-American (pre-Columbian) calendars are complicated. It is at least clear that most cultures used several different types of calendars simultaneously… but for different purposes. Time was measured on short cycles for things like prediction of childbirth and managing the next year’s crop planting or harvesting; or longer cycles for religious purposes, sacrifices, the election of new Kings and the planning of wars. The various calendars embrace the concept of time on a seasonal basis, on a relative basis and an absolute day-by-day progression from a fixed start point.
All Mesoamerican cultures seem to have had a 260-day ritual calendar with no confirmed correlation to astronomy or agriculture, and what is known as a “vague year” calendar which was based on the solar year of 360 days plus 5 “extra” days, making 365. The latter calendar was approximate (because of what we now call leap years) and would have needed frequent correction but it seems they never bothered to do this… allowing for the discrepancies in other ways. Reading the two calendars in conjunction identified a specific day, but not a specific year over periods longer than 52 years since the two calendars became temporarily synchronised on a 52 year cycle.
The third major calendar is known as the “Long Count” and was most notably used by the Maya. It starts with a mythical “creation date” (and the Maya believed there had been more than one creation) and uniquely defines sequential days over much longer time periods - roughly 5,125 solar years. The Mayans had the most sophisticated (ie complicated) systems and also simultaneously used a 584-day “Venus cycle” to plan good days for particular activities and a 819-day cycle of unknown origin or purpose.
Every culture seems to have a customised version of the 260-day calendar and these presumably have a common origin, which is not known – but certainly ancient and perhaps from the Olmec. The Aztec version is known as the “tonalpohualli” and is the equivalent of the much earlier Mayan “Tzolk'in”. It’s neither solar nor lunar and has been variously suggested as derived from the cycle of Venus, related to the number of days when the sun is not directly overhead, represents the human menstrual/gestation cycle, or even that it’s purely mathematical and based on the Meso-American “magic” numbers 13 and 20 (since the calendar is divided into 13 periods of 20 days). The 365-day solar cycle is known as the “haab’” in Mayan culture and the “xiuhpohualli” in Aztec culture. It’s normally the “glyphs” used to represent the days that identify the culture, since the mathematical or astronomical basis for the calendars is common across all cultures.
What is known as the Mayan “long count” calendar “ends” at 20th December this year (on our calendar) and there has been a lot of hoo-hah in the press about this signifying a prediction of the end of the world by the Maya. That’s complete rubbish. For the Maya, it would have been an auspicious day representing the end of a cycle… but they would have simply started a new cycle on the next day. You might like to dig out that tinfoil hat just in case. :laugh:


To date the best and most elaborate explanation of any of the Meso American implements of destruction and otherwise will come from Roger......Thank you Roger, for elightening me and others on this subject.

Jess B.

[painshill]

The Mayan civilisation dates from about 2,000BC, was at its peak between 250-900AD and dominated most of western Meso-America. By the time the Spanish arrived, they were in severe decline and living on past glories. But they survived the conquest and still exist today.

The term “Aztec” is a misnomen, proposed by the German explorer van Humboldt in the 19th Century. The semi-nomadic Mexica people are most properly what we would call the first Aztecs and arrived in what is now the Valley of Mexico in the 13th Century, travelling by boat from a legendary homeland they called “Aztlan” (the “place of herons”). We don’t know where Aztlan was, or indeed whether it really existed as such, but there is reasonable evidence that it might have been in the vicinity of what is now the artificial Lake Powell on the Colorado River between the borders of Utah and Arizona.

The Mexica were granted barren land by the existing Culhuacan culture of the Mexico Valley, with whom they began to intermarry. They were becoming assimilated until their expulsion in 1323, arising from the Culhuacan king being duped into agreeing to his daughter being instated as a Mexica goddess. A Mexica priest appeared during the festival dinner wearing her flayed skin as part of the ritual and that was the end of the friendship!

The Mexica fled to a small island on the west side of Lake Texcoco where they founded the city of Tenochtitlan in 1325. In 1427 they forged an alliance with the city-States of Texcoco and Tlacopan, establishing what we call the Aztec empire (which was therefore not a single ethnic group), dominating central Meso-America from coast to coast until the Spanish arrived. Cortez decimated them via warfare, introduced diseases (smallpox and typhus) and alliances with their enemies. They weren’t well-liked and many subdued groups viewed the Spanish as a route to freedom from Aztec domination. They were right.

Certainly the Aztec and what was left of the Maya would have encountered one another in the overlap period from the mid-15th Century onwards, but not necessarily on a completely friendly basis. The Maya were in no shape to wage war at this time and would probably have been forced to pay “tribute” to the Aztec empire.

As for the calendars, no… neither the tonalpohualli nor the Tzolk'in suggest a “new beginning” – they are ritual 260-day calendars. Only the “Long Count” calendar works from a defined “creation point” to a defined end point. If one looks at the eight earliest known long count calendar engravings from Meso-America (from six sites), none have the same start/end date. Four of them are inscribed in Epi-Olmec style, one in Izapan style and the rest are believed to be Mayan. The dating suggests that the long count system pre-dates the Mayans and may well have Olmec origin.

As for the item… the producer of your repro has taken a few artistic liberties in trying to condense the detail of the huge original into a small replica. The lower extreme of the outer rim of the original shows two “fire serpents” meeting face to face. Their tails are joined at the top with the symbol for the ritual date “13-Reed”, considered to represent the Mexica creation date, and possibly corresponding to 1011AD. In general, the stone is believed to be a graphic representation of the Mexica (Aztec) cosmos and creation myth.

[billybria]

Lol crazy Mexicans so u think the Aztecs would take advantage of the Maya if they crossed paths? U dont think the Aztecs would as k them to join them since they had many ethnic groups or do u think they would have gotten offended by there offer? But why wage war when they're empire is falling? Did the Aztecs fight the Spanish or were they to intimidated?  Ohh those are fire serpents!! Awesome, so it like the same god the Mayans worship that came to them from the star in the middle of orions belt, and they have two serpents declining and ascending to the when the sun goes up and down right? Or is it a whole diff belief with the Aztecs since they had many ethnic groups. So its a calander of creation instead of the recycling of the Maya