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13 Resolving Contradictions as a Methodology for Investigating Maya Calendar History and Its Cosmological Associations Robert L. Hall in a recent book Prudence rice (2004:9) speaks of the “tyranny of the epigraphic record,”one of whose dangers is placing too much reliance upon surviving stone inscriptions to gain insights into some historical aspects of ancient Maya society. she is not speaking so much of the danger of accepting the rhetoric of the inscribed texts as historical truth as the danger of not considering what might be fact just because it was not cut in stone. There is an implicit early background for the Classic Maya calendar that does not appear on any inscribed monument or surviving written text in the form of actual dates.The background is implicit because it exists mainly in the form of certain contradictions that presume the sometime existence of a calendar other than that known for the Classic Period. Archaeologists are understandably reluctant to speculate on “what might have been” in the absence of clues of a material sort. it can be headline news today (interior section, of course) when an archaeologist finds an object that suggests the Middle Preclassic existence of an element of the Maya calendar such as a day sign because, among other things, it suggests the existence of writing. Yet, for a century and more there have been clues, some overlooked, others just not fully appreciated, that the Maya calendar had a long and complex history before the first date ever appeared on stone.The evidence is in the form of contradictions. Contradictions Preserved in our Calendar Contradictions can provide valuable clues to past events. in the area of calendar studies, the very names of our own “Christian” calendar months and days are good examples. to begin with, the names of the months contain the names of some very un-Christian pagan deities.Mars and Juno were the Maya Calendar History and its Cosmological Associations 289 eponymous roman gods of the months March and June, for example. our Wednesday lightly conceals the name of Woden, a god in the germanic background of the English language, while in countries with stronger roman imperial histories the same day derives from the name of the roman god Mercury. december is the twelfth month of our calendar, but the name is based on the Latin word decem, which translates as “ten.” september is currently the ninth month but has a name based on the Latin word septem, or “seven,” and so on for the names october and november as well.This is because the Christian calendar once began with March (Aveni 1989:176).This clue is preserved in the contradictions. russia’s october revolution was an october revolution only in the reckoning of the Julian (Julius Caesar’s) calendar still in use in russia in 1917. in countries that had earlier adopted the gregorian calendar, starting in 1582, it was a revolution in november. such discrepancies provide clues to calendar reform of another sort. in this case, it is a readjustment in the length of the year after the shift from the Julian calendar to the gregorian calendar . russia’s official religion was russian orthodoxy, whose patriarchs did not wish to follow the lead of rome in calendar reform. other kinds of religious history are also vaguely concealed in our calendar and present other contradictions. The selection of december 25 as the official day of Christ’s birth at the Council of nicea (325 c.e.) was influenced by the birth on the december solstice of the Persian god Mithras, the unconquered sun, whose worship was an official roman religion competing with Christianity at the time.The december solstice falls on the twenty-first of the month and not the twentyfifth , of course. Because of the difference in the length of the Julian calendar year and that of the actual tropical year, the date of the solstice had moved forward four days by the time of the Council of nicea. Contradictions Preserved in the Maya Calendar and ritual Practice The Yucatec Mayas that diego de Landa knew and wrote of had a year whose month names seemed to contain contradictions.Yaxkin was the sixth month of the Yucatec year but had a name based on the words yax, or “new, green,”and kin, “sun,day.”The preceding month was Xul,which translates as “end.”There is an implication here that there had once been a year that ended with the month Xul and began...

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