A fresh critique contends that the accepted conversions of dates from the Mayan calendar to the contemporary one may be incorrect by as much as 50 or 100 years, and it was included as a chapter in the new textbook “Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World” (Oxbow Books, 2010). That would invalidate the dates of historical Mayan events and move the alleged and overhyped 2012 catastrophe back several decades. The Mayan calendar finishes in 2012, which is similar to how our year ends on December 31. This is the basis for the gloomy predictions.
The GMT constant, so termed after the final initials of three early Mayanist academics, was used to convert the Mayan calendar to the current Gregorian calendar. According to the chapter’s author, Gerardo Aldana, professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a significant portion of the work focused on dates discovered from colonial papers that were written in the Mayan language using the Latin script.
Later, the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a Mayan calendar and almanack that plots dates in relation to Venus’ motions, was utilised by American linguist and anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury to support the GMT constant.
According to Aldana, “He held the opinion that his work removed the final hurdle to completely embracing the GMT constant.” Others went even farther, asserting that he had established the accuracy of the GMT constant.
Aldana, however, contends that Lounsbury’s proof is far from conclusive.
The credibility of the supporting evidence is what determines whether the Venus Table can be accepted as evidence for the FMT, he stated. He said that because the historical data is less trustworthy than the Table itself, the GMT constant argument “falls like a stack of cards.”
Aldana prefers to concentrate on the reasons why the present interpretation can be incorrect rather than offering any suggestions for the accurate calendar conversion. It appears that proponents of end-of-the-world theories may need to locate a different prehistoric calendar to base their doomsday predictions.
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