An international team of archaeologists has discovered a 1,300 year-old Maya text that provides only the second known reference to the so-called “end date” for the Maya calendar on December 21, 2012.
A stone block from La Corona, left, and its detail reveal “end date” for the Maya calendar (David Stuart)
“This text talks about ancient political history rather than prophecy,” explained Dr Marcello Canuto, Director of Tulane’s Middle American Research Institute and co-director of the excavations at the Maya ruins of La Corona in Guatemala. “This new evidence suggests that the 13 Bak’tun date was an important calendrical event that would have been celebrated by the ancient Maya; however, they make no apocalyptic prophecies whatsoever regarding the date.”
La Corona for many decades has been known as the enigmatic “Site Q,” the source of many looted sculptures whose whereabouts had remained a mystery until its rediscovery only fifteen years ago.
In 2012, the team decided to excavate in front of a building that had been heavily damaged nearly 40 years ago by looters looking for carved stones and tombs.
“Last year, we realized that looters of a particular building had discarded some carved stones because they were too eroded to sell on the antiquities black market,” said Dr Tomás Barrientos of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. “So we knew they found something important, but we also thought they might have missed something.”
In fact, in 2012, excavations not only recovered 10 more discarded hieroglyphic stones but also something that the looters missed entirely – an untouched step with a set of 12 exquisitely carved stones still in their original location. Combined with the known looted blocks, the original staircase had a total of no less than 264 hieroglyphs, making it one of the longest ancient Maya texts known, and the longest in Guatemala.
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