I'd like comments on the claims below from their 1982 book The Cosmic Serpent.
I know that the early Roman calendar had an unnumbered winter period which people think was probably 60-61 days, and I don't think they can back up that claim, but does anyone know anything about the others Aubrey ring and Mayan calendar claims?

Thanks.


10.8 Calendars and constellations: the origins of astronomy

If short-period comets were indeed sky-gods, and the comet which we
are now calling the Cosmic Serpent came spectacularly close to the
Earth at intervals, then the desirability of predicting the returns
would be clear: astronomy would grow out of theology. Obviously no
extreme or exclusive claims can be made for the role of comets, as
agricultural and navigational requirements provide their own impetus
for observing the heavens. Nevertheless the extraordinary past
behaviour of comets may well have generated an acute interest in
celestial cycles. And if this was so, it is to be expected that
significant vestiges of these origins may yet be with us in forms that
have until now gone unrecognized. In particular, evidence might be
found in the early calendric systems. Any calendar recording the
recurrence of the Cosmic Serpent would operate concurrently with a
solar one necessary for agriculture. As the comet faded out, say later
than about 1000 BC, the comet calendar would either be forgotten or
become a divine vestige of unknown purpose. Calendar systems reached
their highest stage of development amongst the South American and
Mexican civilizations, and we shall examine some aspects of these.
The Mayas had three calendars and a belief in the cyclic nature of
time. They believed that the forces controlling the gods were subject
to these cycles; although some gods were unaffected by them, others
were trapped within them. Aôcording to von Hagen, ‘Every moment of
their lives was involved in the position of the planets. They feared
that if the gods were not propitiated they would put an end to the
world, and that is perhaps the reason for their obsession with an
almost exact calendar. .
The haab calendar was made up of eighteen months of twenty days, plus
five empty days. This year was adjusted to give a solar year of
365.2420 days, closer to the ‘real' year of 365.2422 days than our own
Gregorian calendar, and confirming that they were keen and competent
observers of the sky. A second calendar, the long count, simply
reckoned the number of days from a date in 3111 BC of unknown
significance. The third calendar was the izolkin, 260 days long. Von
Hagen remarks that ‘No one knows why they settled on this precise
number of days, unless it comes out of some "crystallized pantheon",
for it has no astronomical significance.' This third calendar is of
very great antiquity; it had great significance as a divine calendar;
and it was used also by the Aztecs and Toltecs.
It happens that twice 260 days is the mean interval between
oppositions (i.e. the synodic period) of any object in a direct orbit
whose orbital period is 3.35 years. This is remarkably close to the
present orbital period of comet Encke. These oppositions are well
behaved in the case of the planets, because of their virtually
circular orbits, but with an eccentric Apollo orbit involved their
nature is quite different: successive synodic periods will vary
greatly, and opposition will vary from a dramatic close encounter to a
passage about 3 a.u. distant. The close encounters, of course, are the
significant ones, but these will happen only very briefly, small
departures from optimum making a large difference to the encounter.
Now 73 periods of 260 days equals 52 years almost exactly; no smaller
number of these periods gives a whole number of years so closely. That
is, the interval between very close encounters of the Earth, with a
Cosmic Serpent of period 3.35 years, is 52 years (we have met a
similar phenomenon with Leonid meteors, which recur in strength at
33-year intervals). And as it happens the Mayas and Aztecs were
obsessed with a 52-year cycle, which they measured as 73 tzolkin
years, for at the end of each cycle the fire god Xiutecuhtli returned,
and was worshipped and propitiated by human sacrifice. It seems then
that the major features of the Maya, Aztec and Toltec calendars are
explicable along these lines and that their notion of gods trapped
within cycles of time is understandable in a quite literal way.
Because of the high orbital eccentricity, perihelion passage would be
a brief event during which angular motion would be rapid, the comet
would presumably be at its most active, and any dimming of sunlight of
which the tail might be capable would occur. These effects would be
seen at about 3.3-year intervals, but the precision of timing of these
phenomena would be lower because of their more diffuse nature.
Nevertheless they would be spectacular and a record of the sidereal as
well as the synodic interval might possibly be preserved in early
calendars.
European and Asiatic calendars were unquestionably lunar and solar and
tied to agricultural needs. Even here, however, one finds that
although the early Roman calendar seems to have comprised twelve lunar
months plus extra days to make up a year of 354 days, some early Roman
authorities mention a year often months and 304 days, which makes no
sense in terms of agriculture or planetary movements. Almost certainly
this goes back to a time before the formation of the Graeco-Roman
empires, that is, before the eighth century BC. As it happens, four
such years amount to 3.33 solar years. The number four seems arbitrary
but it may be significant that when the Greeks emerged from this
period and set up a twelve-month year, they also chose to celebrate a
major event, whose primary symbol was the torch of Olympus, on a
four-year cycle. Speculative though this is, the numerology is
sufficiently striking to suggest that a deeper investigation of these
early calendars might be rewarding. Allowing for the errors introduced
by rounding, the permissible range of period we find for the
progenitor of Encke is, roughly:

from the 56 pits of the Aubrey ring: 3.27-3.32 years
from the 260 days and 52 years of the
Mayan calendar: 3.31-3.38 years
from the 4 x 304 days of the early
Roman calendar: 3.32-3.34 years
(cf. the modern orbital period of Encke of 3.30 years).

Evidently there is a degree of selectivity here as these numbers are
to some extent obtained in consequence of the preconception that the
Cosmic Serpent was important. Nevertheless to our knowledge no
explanation has been forthcoming until now for these early Mayan and
Roman calendars, and a stronger rationale than simply predicting
eclipses is obtained for the Aubrey ring.
If our interpretation of certain aspects of megalithic monuments is
correct, the comet was presumably seen at least as far back as 2500
BC. We have one further astronomical inheritance from this period, the
division of the sky into constellations. The traditional pattern of
constellations derives from the star catalogue of Hipparchus(c.
190—120 BC) who in turn had access to descriptions of the sky from
Eudoxus (c. 403—350 BC) and the Phaenomena, a poetic manual intended
for sailors written by Aratus (c. 315—250 BC). The astronomer Ovenden
has been able to show that the constellations are of vastly greater
antiquity than the dates of these authors. Because the pole of
rotation of the celestial sphere is fixed at any one epoch, stars
within a certain distance of one pole will always be visible on any
clear dark night, while those within the same angular distance of the
opposite pole will never be seen. The size of these zones depends on
the latitude of the observer. However the poles precess, moving around
a small circle in the sky with a period of 26,000 years, so that over
the millennia different sets of stars will come to occupy the zones.
By studying the pattern of constellations given us by Hipparchus, it
should be possible to detect a blank area, an unknown region, the
extent and centre of which define the date and latitude of the
constellation makers. Ovenden went considerably further than this,
demonstrating that the constellations were arranged in a pattern
symmetric about a single point in the sky. For example the
constellations of Auriga, Perseus, Hercules, Bootes and others form a
ring whose centre is the north celestial pole in the middle of the
third millennium BC. Again, Hydra the water snake stretches for almost
90° and yet its stars are all faint. The only reason for assigning a
constellation to these inconspicuous stars seems to be that Hydra
marked the celestial equator around 3000 BC. Combining these
alignments, Ovenden found the constellations date from 2800 BC ± 300
years fitting by eye, or 2600 BC ± 800 years fitting by a statistical
method. The latitude of observation was found to be 36°N ± l~-°, and
although it was suggested that the Minoans might have been the
creators, most investigators believe the constellations to be of
Mesopotamian origin. Many of the early constellation figures, some of
which were handed on to us by the Greeks, portray creatures which are
horned or have dragon-like appendages—all known attributes of later
descriptions of comets. Certainly the constellations were seen as the
mansions of the gods, their creation being described for example in
the Enuma Elish as:

Then Marduk created places for the Great Gods.
He set up their likenesses in the constellations.

The division of the sky into figures with possible cometary
associations emerged then at just about the time we suppose man was
first observing the celestial events that were eventually responsible
for disaster. The possibility of a causal link exists, and although
there is no denying navigational and agricultural reasons for mapping
the sky, there is now also a real possibility that serious attention
to the sky arose in part as a result of the spectacular and sometimes
terrifying events that man was witnessing. After all, so far as is
known, the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent had managed without
constellations for a long time prior to these events. At least there
may be further dimensions to our understanding of the origins of
calendars and constellations, and their place in the evolution of the
earliest civilizations.
Indeed, these may extend to the origins of astronomy generally.


Doug Weller

Director The Hall of Ma'at
Doug's Skeptical Archaeology site::
[www.ramtops.co.uk]