UT Professor Deciphers Mayan Stones
A stone panel from the La Corona stairway shows a seated Mayan king. Photo copyright Proyecto La CoronaAudio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Archaeologists in Guatemala recently discovered a Mayan stone that makes a second reference to December 21, 2012 as an “end date.” David Stuart, a professor of art history at the University of Texas at Austin was the one to decipher the hieroglyph. He joined KUT’s Nathan Bernier to talk about the substantial find.
Stuart:
There were 22 carved, inscribed stones with lots of details about ancient Mayan history –about their kings, marriages with other sites – it’s was kind of this soap opera that is summarized in this new monument that was found.
But the 2012 thing is getting a lot of publicity right now and is probably on the minds of many people. The Mayan calendar is a pretty complex thing. It has a lot of nested cycles, kind of like a Russian doll. And this is the turn of one of the larger cycles. What nobody talks about is there are far larger cycles still. This is not the end of Mayan time. It’s no end date, really.
Listen to their full conversation by clicking the player above.
Podcast: Download (6.1MB)
