Gary Daniels Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rebby Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > The whole suggestion seems vanishingly flimsy
> to
> > me. The scenario requires that the
> preliterate
> > Maya ancestors
>
> First, we don't know the Maya/Olmec/Whoever of
> 2720 BC were pre-literate. Not having stone
> monuments with writing that date to this time
> period doesn't prove there was no writing at this
> time period. Writing existed in the Old World that
> far back in time. It could have existed in
> Mesoamerica as well.

Just because you don't know that in 2720 the Maya were literate does not mean that any Mesoamerican scholar agrees with you. Please provide a citation from a Maya scholar that supports this idea. while you are it please provide a citation from a refereed publication that supports your proposal that The Long Count was in existence by 400 BC. I just asked Tony Aveni what the consensus is on this question and he agrees with David Stuart's 200 BC as I previously posted.
>
> >began assiduously counting the
> > years in 2720 BC, and kept the count going
> with
> > astonishing accuracy for over a millennium
> and a
> > half, through many generations,
> disasters,other
> > notable events, innovations and culture
> change;
> > made the connection with a similar event in
> 1142
> > BC,and calculated the interval between the
> two;
> > and then sat down some seven centuries later
> to
> > work out the complexities of the Mayan
> calendar
> > based on that interval. Prima facie, that
> does not
> > sound sensible to me.

Purely your coulda-woulda hypothesis -- there is no evidence except your wishful thinking for this actually happening. The process first involved development of the most fundamental Mesoamerican calendar-- the 260-day ritual calendar; next the development of the next commensurate calendar the 52 year joining of the 360-day solar calendar with the 260-day ritual calendar and only then the development of the Long Count with an Initial date.

The calendar did not begin by "counting the days" for a thousand years and then developing all the commensurate cycles involving things like the Venus cycle as well as all the other cycles harmonized by the Mayan calendar. This is placing the cart before the horse.

Further, the earliest calendric day signs are found in the Zapotec area NOT in the Maya area,
> >
>
> Keeping a count of days for a thousand years
> doesn't seem so impossible when you think about
> our modern "count of days" that is 2000 years old
> and has been maintained through countless
> disasters including black deaths and world wars
> and collapse of empires and dark ages and other
> disasters as well as calendar adjustments (julian
> to gregorian) yet the count continues.

Yes, and we have evidence of writing since the Egyptian and the Sumerian civilizations, which is absent for several thousand years in Mesoamerica. The comparison is invalid.

I also posted evidence that initial dates of most other calendars were not based in commemorating some great flood or natural event-- why would, we then have to postulate that the Maya were completely different?

Bernard
>
>
>
>
> Gary Daniels
> Author, "Mayan Calendar Prophecies: Predictions
> for 2012-2052"
> Creator, LostWorlds.org,
> TheRealMayanProphecies.com
>
>