The
oldest-known version of the ancient
Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a
lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the
Guatemalan
rainforest.
The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a
king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference
chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of
their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn't a countdown to the end
of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.
"The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions,
octillions of years into the future," said archaeologist
David Stuart of the
University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. "Numbers we can't even
wrap our heads around." [
End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears]
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