How did the Myans know about the alignment which will occur in either 2011 and 2012 in the first place.?

Question

During their existance could they have known the universes workings? And if so how?

Answer 1

Unlike the modern, North American population, the Mayans, like the Classical Greeks of over 2000 years ago, knew about precession.

The orientation of Earth's rotation spin 'wobbles' in a cycle that lasts 25,800 years. The Mayans knew about this except they thought it was closer to 25,600 years (not easy to estimate such a long period from a relatively short interval of observations, especially without telescopes).

Once you understand the principle, then it is easy to understand two things:
1. the location of the celestial pole changes along a circle (of radius equal to the obliquity of 23.4393 degrees) and a 'pole star' will again be a pole star 25,800 years later.
2. the position of the Sun at given events (equinox and solstice for example) advances by a small angle every year (modern value is 360 degrees divided by 25,800 = 50.3").

Actually, it is the value of the advance that is calculated and, from that, the period of precession is calculated.

Once you know that, you can determine the position of the equinox and solstice and 'predict' when each will cross into a new constellation or arrive at a selected point on the celestial sphere.

For us who are more interested by the equinox, we passed into the Age of Pisces about 2000 years ago and we are now entering the Age of Aquarius (the position of the Sun at March equinox is moving into the constellation of the water bearer).

"This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, Age of..."
sorry, that old song got into my head.

However, for the Mayans, the December solstice was more important. Their years end with the December solstice. They must have noticed that the position of the Sun at December solstice was approaching the Milky Way (the band of light in the sky, since they did not know about galaxies) and they could have predicted that it would reach it by 2012 (except they would have named the year something else than 2012, more like "the start of the 13th Batkun of the present Age") and they would have adjusted their calendar accordingly.

--- an aside on adjusting calendars:

Adjusting a calendar after the fact is nothing new. The calendar used in Rome (counting years after the founding of Rome) was not created on the day of the founding of Rome, but many generations after.

The 'Julian Date' used by astronomers is a simple day count from noon (Universal time) on the date January 1, 4013 BC (a date chosen because many cycles were at 0 on that day, e.g., it was New Moon and a January 1).

7 a.m. New York time, December 1 2007 will be the start of Julian Date 2,454,435.

Our own calendar was adjusted so that year 1 was the first year of the life of Jesus, as determined by the monk Dionysius Exiguus (Denis the Short) in what we now call AD 525, even though the Anno Domini calendar was not really used (in England) before the year 731.

---- back to the Mayans:

So, December 21, 2012 (or 13.0.0.0 as the Mayans would call it) is simply intended as the end of a Long Count and the start of the next one; and it was adjusted so that the solstice of that day occured in the thickest part of the Milky Way.

We know about galaxies. it just so happens that putting it in the thickest part of the Milky Way, makes it the solstice position that is the closest to the Galactic centre. However, the alignment is far from perfect: there is still a difference of 5 deg. 33 min. 38 sec. (11 times the apparent diameter of the Full Moon) between the Sun's position and the direction of the Galactic centre.

Already this year (2007), the solstice will be almost as 'close' to the Galactic centre: 5 d. 33 m. 40 s. The difference is less than the apparent size of the smallest crater visible to the eye on the Moon.

So, if the 'almost-alignment' of the Sun with the Galactic centre is a trigger, I guess we are already dead. But then, we already died on December 31, 1999, when our own calendar ran out of numbers and all our computers blew up.

Remember?

If we consider the higher order counts (e.g., 13 Long Counts and 13 times 13 Long Counts), the calendar could have another 400 million years to go. There maybe as many as 4 orders:
piktun (13 baktuns = 1 Long Count),
kalabtun (13 piktuns?)
k'inchiltun (13 kalabtuns?)
alautun (13 k'inchiltuns?)

1 alautun = 13*13*13*25,600 (or 25,800) years = at least 56 million years.

The question marks are from the possibility that the factor is 20 (the normal Mayan base) rather than 13, making the calendar much longer still.

20*20*20*25,600 = almost 205 million years.

Answer 2

With enough observation, especially in a pre-electric world, one can figure out just about anything regularly observable. Once you have the path down, it's just a matter of calculating when this and that object come into-- wait a minute! WHAT "alignment"? There isn't any alignment in 2012! What are you talking about. There are no unusual conjunctions going on in the solar system that year, and if you mean "galactic alignment", that makes no sense. The galaxy doesn't work that way. Exactly WHAT is being "aligned"?

Stop listening to "psychics". They are either charlatans or nincompoops.

Answer 3

Although the Mayans may have known quite a bit about astronomy, they knew absolutely nothing about the galaxy. The centre and orientation of the galaxy was discovered by Harlow Shapley early in the 20th century based on the distribution of globular clusters, and the true nature of galaxies was only discovered shortly before that. The "galactic equator" is just an arbitrary line on the celestial sphere based on the statistical distribution of stars, and is pretty much a guess, as compared to the celestial equator and the ecliptic, which are very precisely defined. So the so called crossing date is probably only accurate within a few decades, no where nerar as precise as a single year, such as 2011 or 2012.

This whole thing is just pseudoscientific nonsense, with no astronomical, linguistic, or archaeological foundation. No professional scientist takes it seriously.

Answer 4

Saying Earth aligns with the Milky Way is nonsense. Our solar system is always part of the Milky Way far from the center and in orbit around the edge of it. It never aligns more at one time than another. Have you forgotten the nonsense about Y2K? How soon we forget! Why do some people love silly Doomsday nonsense? You can find much nonsense of many types on the internet or elsewhere.

Answer 5

If you observe the sky long enough and you can deduce the regular and cyclical movement of objects across the sky, you can pretty quickly determine when certain objects are going to be where in the sky.

They observed, recorded, and predicted. There's nothing magical or alien or mysterious. They were very astute sky-watchers who were able to make a fairly accurate chart.

Answer 6

they didnt. the mayans had no idea of a galactic center, not even that there were galaxies. and the center of the milky way, the sun, and the earth line up every year and nothing happens. there is no possible way that an alignment like that could have any effect on earth.

Answer 7

They took lots of very interesting 'talking plants' and expanded their minds to meet the fabric of the Cosomos.

Answer 8

I bet if the Mayans had know how many uneducated people would get excited by their calender for all the wrong reasons, they would have trademarked it to collect royalties.

:-)

Answer 9

no they didnt know but they were excellent star charters. 2012 was the year in they're bible that the world would end a new world would begin

Answer 10

They didn't. Nothing they said can be taken as scientific proof.