mch

42 OUR ANCESTORS CAME FROM OUTER SPACE
years. Evidently, every 104 years, when the planets Mercury and
Venus had a meeting with the sun, and especially every 312
years, when Mars joined the group, the celebration was even
bigger and the number of virgins and prisoners sacrificed was
substantially increased.
To compute long periods of time and to make astronomical
calculations the Mayas used a calendar that was based on the
**Great Cycle"—a period of time that was not precisely known to
our scientists. It was vaguely thought that the last cycle had
started about 3,000 years before Christ. It was also thought that
this cycle had a span of about 5,000 years and therefore had to
run out soon. Finally, it was assumed that this long span was
divided in cycles a little shorter than 20 years each. For this very
scant knowledge we have to thank the bishop of Yucatan, Diego
de Landa, who in 1549 ordered all the ancient Mayan documents
and manuscripts to be publicly burned because he could not
understand these treasures and to him they were the work of
Satan.
Anybody who wants to tackle the mystery of the Mayan calendar
today has to solve three different problems: the starting date
of this calendar, the length of the time span this calendar
covered, and the duration of its short cycles. Opinions on all
three questions differ widely. Originally, the dates proposed for
the start of this long calendar were as much as 520 years apart.
Presently this discrepancy has been reduced to 260 years and
there are only two groups of American archaeologists who dispute
each other. The team led by Herbert Spinden maintains
that the long Mayan calendar started in 3373 B.C. The team lead
by Edward Thompson thinks it began in 3113 b.c. As the Mayas
counted time, this 260 year difference represents thirteen periods
of 20 years each that are called "katuns." Twenty katuns, or 400
years, are equal to one "baktun."
The duration of the Mayan long calendar was accepted by the
archaeologists with good reason to be 5,200 years, or 260 times
20 years, because the scientists were well aware of the fact that
for the Mayas the numbers 13, 26, and 260 were very important.
The short cycle, as everybody thought, had to be about 19.75
years, but nobody could explain why it had to be a number that