The Mayan Calendar: Science or End-of-the-World Myth?
Fexingo History · Mesoamerica
The Mayan Calendar: Science or End-of-the-World Myth?
For centuries, the Maya calendar has been shrouded in mystery, most famously misrepresented as a doomsday prophecy for December 21, 2012. But behind the pop-culture hype lies a sophisticated system of timekeeping developed by one of Mesoamerica’s most advanced civilizations. This show, hosted by Lucas and Luna, strips away the myths to explore the true science of the Maya calendar: its Long Count, Tzolk’in, and Haab’ cycles, and how they governed agriculture, ritual, and dynastic power. We journey from the Preclassic city of Nakbé to the Classic-era splendor of Tikal and Calakmul, where stelae and glyphs record the reigns of kings like Jasaw Chan K’awiil I and the rivalry with Dos Pilas. We decode the Dresden Codex, the oldest surviving Maya book, and examine how calendar priests predicted eclipses and the movements of Venus. The show also confronts the conquest: how Spanish friars like Diego de Landa burned Maya codices, nearly erasing this knowledge, and how modern epigraphers painstakingly reconstructed it. Why does the calendar continue to captivate us? Because it reveals a worldview where time is cyclical, not linear—a perspective that challenges our own. Fexingo History dives deep, one topic at a time.
