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Lab Equipment The Maya prophecy predicting the 2012 end of the world may be off by 50 to 100 years or more, according to a new book. 
For nearly half a century, Maya scholars have relied on a fixed numerical value called the GMT constant as a means of correlating the dates on the ancient Maya calendar with those on the Gregorian- or modern- calendar. Gerardo Aldana, associate professor at the Univ. of California at Santa Barbara, challenges the accepted Gregorian dates of all Classic Mayan historical events, including the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it 2012 prophecies in Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World, the second in a series edited by John Steele, associate professor of Egyptology and Ancient West Asian Studies at Brown Univ.. Aldana's research, in general, focuses on reconstructing Mayan astronomical practices, which for the most part can be recovered from their applications. Most of the data found in the archeological record amount to ritual events timed by astronomical phenomena; architecture oriented to observable astronomical events; or numerology tying together science, history, and religion with hieroglyphic inscriptions carved in stone. "One of the principal complications is that there are really so few scholars who know the astronomy, the epigraphy, and the archeology," says Aldana. "Because there are so few people who are working on that, you get people who don't see the full scope of the problem. And because they don't see the full scope, they buy things they otherwise wouldn't. It's a fun problem." Aldana turns the lens away from just the archaeological record to include a critical attention to the methods used by modern scholars to access the astronomical events viewed by ancient astronomers. Based in part on astronomical events, the GMT constant is named for early Mayanists Joseph Goodman, Juan Martinez-Hernandez, and J. Eric S. Thompson. Each contributed to its calculation. "Goodman worked at the turn of the 20th century, and Martinez shortly thereafter," says Aldana. "Neither of them found much of a following because at the time, the work of Sylvanus Morley and Herbert Spinden was considered the strongest." The early work of Goodman, Martinez, Morley, and Spinden put heavy emphasis on the dates recovered from colonial documents written in Mayan languages and recorded in the Latin alphabet, Aldana says. "Thompson did a much more thorough job of addressing as much data as possible." Aldana's article centers, for the most part, on the work of Floyd Lounsbury, an American linguist, anthropologist, and Mayanist scholar and epigrapher who examined the problem of the GMT constant by focusing on the data in the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a combination calendar and almanac that charts specific dates related to the movements of Venus. "Astronomy had been considered in the past, but none had put the emphasis on the Venus Table as much as Lounsbury did," Aldana explains. "He took the position that his work removed the last obstacle to fully accepting the GMT constant. Others took his work even further, suggesting that he had proven the GMT constant to be correct. Because of its convenience for specific types of research, et cetera, the acceptance of the GMT in scholarly circles today is very close to unanimous." Aldana's review of Lounsbury's conclusions demonstrates that they are far from irrefutable. "This may not seem to be much, but what it does is destabilize the entire argument," he says. "If the Venus Table cannot be used to prove the GMT as Lounsbury suggests, its acceptance depends on the reliability of the corroborating data. "The rest of the article historically unpacks each element of corroborating data to show that they are even less stable and/or persuasive than the Venus data. And the overall argument behind the GMT constant falls like a stack of cards." Although Aldana identifies the problems of the GMT constant, he isn't the first to question the calendar correlation and offers neither a solution nor a replacement. He says his goal is to study the soundness of the arguments presented in support of- and opposition to- the GMT constant and attempts others have made at identifying a solution. Aldana says a sound demonstration of the incorrectness of the GMT is a necessary first step in deriving a sound replacement. "A few scholars have stood up and says, No, the GMT is wrong. But in my opinion, what they've done is try to provide alternatives without looking at why the GMT is wrong in the first place."
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