According to sociologists, New Year's celebrations are the most beloved holidays in Russia. It is a pity that they have to wait for 365, or even 366 days. But there was a time when the New Year came more often …
In Asia, the new year is celebrated in February, in Africa - in some places in September (when spring comes in the Southern Hemisphere), in Europe and America - on January 1. This day as a starting point was determined by the Catholic Church in 1582, adopting the Gregorian calendar (named after the next pope). Even the Russian state lives according to the Gregorian calendar, according to which the year begins on the first day of January. But, one way or another, the holiday falls to us only once every 365 days.
But the ancient Maya celebrated the New Year once every … 260 days! At least, this is evidenced by stone discs found in abundance by archaeologists. Hieroglyphs have long been deciphered, each of them has a very specific translation, and the meaning is generally incomprehensible. After all, if you take the decoding literally, it turns out that the Maya lived according to the Tzolkin calendar, in which there were 13 months of 20 days.
According to him, the events and years of life of the leaders were counted, the history of cities and the people in general was calculated, and prophecies were made. Even the hype about the end of the world, predicted by the Maya at the end of December last year, is rooted in the Tzolkina in particular. The Europeans (most likely mistakenly) believed that the Maya did not use decimal, like we do, but the decimal number system. Hence all the gossip and speculation about the 13th baktun, universal catastrophe and the like. Now we know that no global disaster happened in December 2012.
By the way, the Maya also had a calendar of 365 days familiar to us. Researchers scornfully call it "agricultural." Meanwhile, it is much more accurate than the Gregorian one, which is used by the entire civilized world. From it, the Indian priests knew exactly when the rainy season would begin, when maize grains had to be thrown into the ground so that they would give the best shoots when there would be a lunar or solar eclipse. And they weren't wrong.
But the Maya stubbornly called it plebeian, and the 260-day - sacred or "traces of God." And they had special codes, according to which the priests could bring modern time counting into line with the tzolkin, down to the hours and minutes. Why did you need a calendar of 260 days? Was he really a useless "toy" for the priests?
Full eclipse
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Even the Spanish scientist Diego de Landa, who came to Yucatan with the conquistadors, wrote: "This country has some kind of secret that has not yet been solved and is also inaccessible to the local people of our time." It is no coincidence that individual Mayan city-states held out under the pressure of the Spaniards longer than the powerful empires of the Aztecs and Incas.
There is a known case when a strong detachment of conquistadors captured the rich Mayan city - there was little to do: kill the remnants of the soldiers and priests who had taken refuge inside the ritual pyramid. Indian resistance was practically suppressed when a Catholic missionary persuaded the Spanish hidalgo to end the slaughter and use the situation to convert the Redskins to the true faith. How they agreed on a truce there, history is silent. But the missionary Cassana da Miranha recalled in his report that he was put to shame by an Indian priest and could not find an explanation for what had happened.
The Indian suggested that the priest perform a miracle, for example, extinguish the sun. Cassana da Miranha replied that it was not in the power of humans and even God. Then the Indian said that his gods are ready to leave the entire human race in darkness, "before the three arrows finish flying," but to prevent the fall of the ancestral pyramid. Miranha laughed and warned the soldiers that now "there will be a focus." Instead of tricks, the Indian warrior, one after another, fired three arrows into the sky, and before the first touched the ground, a solar eclipse began, judging by the reports of Miranha - complete. Needless to say, the conquistadors fled in fear, throwing away looted and even their property on the move.
First, the Indians, of course, were lucky that a solar eclipse began. But the priest knew that it would begin right now, and used this, perhaps, the last chance to defend the city. Secondly, it was the Maya who spoke Spanish, and not the Spanish Mayan, which indicates the level of general erudition of the conflicting parties. Thirdly, Europeans learned to predict solar eclipses only at the end of the 19th century. But the Mayan priest knew perfectly well how he threatened the Spaniards, otherwise his city would have fallen just like the others.
Of course, the Vatican Chancellery appreciated Miranha's report. In itself, the solar eclipse was not news, but the cowardly behavior of the missionary did not please the holy fathers. A severe penance (church penalty) was imposed on Miranha and accused of cowardice. But the fact remains: the Mayan priest (and, it should be noted, at that time the Mayan civilization was in decline) knew exactly when the solar eclipse would come.
Space catastrophe
It turns out that the Maya possessed exceptional knowledge in astronomy and could not confuse anything. This means that the tzolkin has some very specific meaning. But it is impossible to live on a calendar with only 260 days. Unless we assume that it was compiled at a time when the Earth revolved around the Sun in just such a period. In other words, the Tzolkin refers to a time when the earth's year consisted of 260 days. But then we will have to admit that the earth's orbit ran much closer to the star, or our planet moved faster in space. Is this possible? What could have happened for our planet to change the route of movement or its speed?
In fact, in the memory of different peoples of the world, information about a monstrous catastrophe of a planetary scale that once befell the Earth has been preserved. The Chaldeans, Hindus, the same American Indians, Chinese and Greeks mentioned a certain cataclysm that almost destroyed humanity.
Moreover, almost all sources agree in the description. First, a certain astronomical event took place, and then all living things almost died as a result of the Flood. The Greeks, for example, told the myth of Phaethon, the son of the sun god, who fell to Earth. Solon, by the way, directly spoke of the fact that the Egyptian priests assured him: under the myth of Phaethon, a real event is hidden, the Greeks are simply too young and illiterate people to accept the truth.
In fact, the assumption that Earth's orbit has changed relatively recently does not seem impossible. For example, many astronomers are sure that the same Mercury became an independent planet relatively recently, and before that it was a satellite of Venus. Or take the asteroid belt. There are suggestions that it was formed from the debris of a dead planet. Its diameter could be about 5900 kilometers - it is less than Mars and more than Mercury. The death of such an object could just become the very astronomical event that was reflected not only on the Earth, but also on the entire system as a whole. Accordingly, the planetary orbit could also change.
Deadly embrace
There is an interesting hypothesis by the German astronomer Gerstenkorn. He believed that the Moon became a satellite of the Earth quite recently. Before that, it could be an independent planet that revolved around the Sun in an orbit close to the Earth. But some time ago, under the influence of some cosmic catastrophe, the Moon lost its speed of rotation, approached our planet and was "captured" by it.
Of course, the approach to such a large object could not but affect the movement of the Earth. It is not hard to guess what should have happened on the surface of our planet during such a cataclysm. Meteor showers, increased tectonic activity, incomprehensible and frightening atmospheric phenomena. The moon, according to Gerstenkorn's calculations, was rapidly approaching the Earth, and the apparent size of its disk grew, eventually exceeding the current one by 20 times.
This should have generated giant tidal waves, the same Flood. “When the Moon was at its minimum distance from the Earth, the height of the tidal wave reached several kilometers,” says the Swedish astronomer Alven.
At a certain moment, the "embrace" of the two heavenly bodies became almost fatal. Probably, the Roche limit was passed (the critical distance from the planet, closer to which, due to the destructive action of gravitational forces, the existence of satellites is impossible), which for the Earth is equal to 2.86 planetary radius. And then, apparently, the most complex laws of gravity came into play, which caused not only the "capture" of the moon, but also the change of the earth's orbit. It remains only to guess what it was like for people, and for all living things.
By the way, the myths of many peoples of the world directly point to the Moon as the source of innumerable troubles and the root cause of the catastrophe. For the same Maya, the night sky before the flood, according to the chronicles, was illuminated not by the Moon, but by Venus. South African Bushmen are also sure that the Moon appeared in the night sky only after the flood. It was not a secret for the ancient Greeks either. Anaxagoras, Apollonius of Rhodes and other authors mentioned the appearance of an Earth satellite in the sky.
And if the myths and legends of many peoples have preserved the memory of the catastrophe, then you can try and determine its place in time. Mathematically, Gerstenkorn calculated that the Moon could have been "captured" by the Earth about 12,000 years ago (in modern chronology). And I must say that almost all peoples who kept a more or less thorough account of time, approximately to the period indicated by Gerstenkorn and attribute the catastrophe that almost destroyed humanity and made the Earth the way we found it.
Mark ALTSHULER