THE YUCATÁN'S CHICXULUB CRATER AND ITS CONNECTION TO THE DINOSAUR EXTINCTION

 

Chicxulub Crater (Photo UT, Austin)

For 170 million years during the Cretaceous Period, a time when oceans formed as land shifted and broke out of one big super-continent into smaller ones, dinosaurs ruled the world. Meanwhile, an asteroid was hurtling towards planet Earth after its misguided journey around the sun. The most consequential outcome of this impact would cause a cataclysmic event known as the fifth mass extinction, wiping out roughly 75 percent of all animal species, including the non-avian dinosaurs. But what really happened when the asteroid collided with Earth? 

Hidden below the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Chicxulub crater marks the impact site where the asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago. "The asteroid was moving astonishingly quickly," according to Professor Gareth Collings of Planetary Science at Imperial College, London. "Probably around 12.5 miles per second when it struck. That's about 100 times the speed of a jumbo jet."

Crater Ring After Impact Drawing

SIZE MATTERS

By studying both the geology at Chicxulub and worldwide, scientists have pieced together what happened that fateful day and in the years following. Larger than the height Mount Everest reaches into the atmosphere, the mountain sized asteroid slammed into Earth, dooming the dinosaurs. It unleashed the equivalent of energy of billions of nuclear weapons all at once. It vaporized the Gulf of Mexico. Bedrock melted into seething white flames at tens of thousands of degrees Celsius and it created a hole miles deep and 120 miles wide.

Its existence is a fairly recent discovery, first put forth in 1978 by geophysicist Glen Penfield, who worked for Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil agency. While searching for oil his crew used a magnetometer as they flew above the Gulf, and that's when he saw the outline of a perfect semi-circle in the clear water below, where the ground had been vaporized in a split second. His device let him and geophysicist Antonio Camargo Zanoguera know it had a magnetic field different from volcanic terrain, a most un-volcano-like symmetry. The saucer shaped underground structure was ten times the size of any volcano with an upward bulge at its center. The two men concurred, according to Smithsonian Magazine, that it could not be the result of a volcano, and was probably an impact crater.

SPECIES COLLAPSE

Because of this impact, Earth's water supplies were poisoned and 75 percent of species vanished. The 25 percent that survived were pushed to the brink of extinction and anything larger than a racoon didn't live. It would take 30,000 years for life to stabilize.

Luis and Walter Alvarez

After Penfield's initial fly-over, Luis and Walter Alvarez (father and son) discovered a thin layer of iridium in a geological record marking the ending of the Cretaceous Period across the entire world. Iridium is more prevalent in comets and asteroids than on earth. The scientists postulated that the impact led to global fires, smoke, and dust clouds that blocked out the sun, cooling the planet and preventing photosynthesis. They hypothesized that the crater might be the K-T impact site.

THE SCIENTISTS

Soon after that, Allen Hildebrand, Ph.D. in Planetary Sciences from University of Arizona, worked with the Alvarez team and published what were considered controversial articles at the time that suggested that a large impact from an asteroid had caused the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The impact site was eventually determined to be at Chicxulub and the extinction it caused came to be known as the K-T event.

Ring of Cenotes Near Impact Site

In 1990 Adriana Ocampo discovered the distribution of cenotes in the Yucatán Peninsula along with her then husband, Dr. Kevin Pope, by using satellite images to map water resources on the peninsula. They found the semi-circular ring of cenotes or sinkholes that she recognized as related to the crater and they hypothesized that the crater might be the K-T event site, publishing their findings in the journal Nature in 1991.

Ocampo has visited the peninsula numerous times since her discoveries but few people are aware of the importance of the place, she was quoted as saying in an interview in Yucatán Magazine. 

"It should be preserved as a world heritage site," she said. Though not yet world heritage worthy, the Chicxulub Crater Science Museum south of Progreso, though temporarily closed due to Covid, is a stunning nod to the asteroid that literally shook our world 66 million years ago and created a new pecking order by destroying the dinosaurs.

Chicxulub Crater Science Museum

Although Ocampo began connecting the dots when she attended a 1988 scientific conference in Acapulco as a young planetary scientist from NASA, having studied with legendary pioneering astro-geologist Eugene Shoemaker, she names Houston Chronicle journalist Carlos Byars as the first person to connect the Yucatan ring to the Alvarez asteroid theory. Byars had shared his theory with Alan Hildebrand who then approached Penfield who'd flown over the Gulf for Pemex. The two of them determined the crater wasn't a volcano but an asteroid impact.

Chicxulub Fishing Boats (By Benandcarma.com)

LAIDBACK SPOT 

Chicxulub Puerto and Chicxulub Pueblo are laid back communities made famous because of the epicenter of the asteroid impact that destroyed the dinosaurs. Even the asteroid museum is miles away from them. But things may change with David Attenborough's The Final Day on BBC that explains in detail what may have transpired so long ago. Paleontologist Robert DePalma joins Attenborough to discuss his recent discovery in a prehistoric graveyard of fossilized creatures. New theories and views are continuing to be made, and PBS will air a two-part series the end of May on the asteroid and the death of the dinosaurs. Welcome to the world of yester-year and the way we, humans, managed to climb to the top of the food chain. We had no competitors and well, here we are. So—what say you? How we doing, folks? 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy.

HOW A THRIFT SHOP FIND REVIVED THE NEARLY FORGOTTEN MATA ORTIZ POTTERY OF MEXICO

 

Mata Ortiz Pot (by Stanford Magazine)

Three pots found in a thrift shop just north of the Mexican border in 1976 in Deming, New Mexico, by Spencer MacCallum proved to be the breakout moment for a unique pottery style known as Mata Ortiz.

In the dusty terrain of northern Chihuahua, the discovery of Mogollon pottery shards from a little-known archeological site, Casa Grandes or Paquimé, gave birth to the unique line. (Mogollon is an archaeological culture of Native American peoples from Southern New Mexico, Arizona, Northern Sonora, and Chihuahua). Named after the modern town of Mata Ortiz, the style was generated by Juan Quezada Celado. 

PAQUIMÉ

Mogollon-Mimbres Pottery

A sophisticated, pre-Columbian culture had revolved around Paquimé dominating the region from approximately 1200 to 1500 AD. Its multi-story ruins could rival those of Chaco Canyon National Park in northwestern New Mexico. Paquimé was famous for ceramics that featured geometric designs in red, black, yellow, and brown, which were traded throughout North America.

A young Juan Quezada, who had been forced to quit school after only two years of formal education to help his family survive, picked firewood in the surrounding areas and found ancient pottery fragments as he worked. The boy found shards even in his own back yard—both the Casas Grandes style and an older style still, Mimbres, characterized by bold black on white zoomorphic designs. (The Mimbres culture flourished from 200 to 500 AD). With his burro he eventually went farther into the mountains collecting firewood, picking up bright shards along the way. 

Paquimé's Massive Roomed Walls (By D. Phillips) 

Though no one knew about the people who made the pottery, everyone knew of the ruins 15 miles north, Paquimé, the center of the Casas Grandes culture. The mounds on the plains were the remains of the outlying communities that spread for miles around the site. At dusk by the light of his campfire, he'd examine his daily collection of shards, trying to figure out how they had been made. At home he dug clay from the arroyos, soaked it, and tried to make pots. They all cracked. Eventually Juan studied the broken pieces and realized that mixing in a little sand would prevent the cracking. His interest led him to the study of the pre-Hispanic pottery of the Mimbres and Casas Grandes cultures. In time, he figured out how to make round bottoms similar to the prehistoric pots by making a mold after finding some in the outlying mounds. 

LEARNING THE ROPES

Gradually he mastered the process. As a young man, without any instruction, he was making and decorating credible pots for his own pleasure. He had re-created the entire ceramic technology from clay preparation to firing, using only shards to guide him. Without help from ceramicists or specialists, he had worked out how the pots were made. But now, as a young married man, he needed to have a variety of jobs to keep food on the table for his family—from working as a cowboy to railroad worker, leaving less time to work with clay.

Mata Ortiz (By TravelThruHistory)

But pottery still enticed him. In 1974 he decided to concentrate on making pots. He could sell enough with local traders to risk leaving his job on the railroad; earnings from the sale of just one pot would outdo what he'd earn on repairing rail tracks. His modest success attracted the interest of his siblings and he began to teach them what he'd learned. He became known as the self-taught interpreter of Casas Grandes pottery, sometimes called New Casas Grandes or Mata Ortiz after the village where it originated. Now around 350 families from his small village produce this thin-walled, finely painted ceramic ware that can rival any handmade pottery in the world. Quezada had resurrected the style and ancient techniques of his ancestors' pottery.

Quezada's Family Gallery in Mata Ortiz

In the process, he rescued a village on the cusp of obscurity and put it on a trajectory that has created a thriving pottery district known for production of this original, contemporary folk pottery. Though there was enough evidence from the ancient shards to intuit the spirit of the long lost native aesthetics of a formerly active pottery production center for trade in the 13th and 14th centuries, most of the potters in Mata Ortiz were young and not beholden to historical styles. They created something similar but new—a post modern adaptation of the traditional pottery.

Spencer MacCallum and Juan Quezada, 1976 

COURTING SUCCESS

Though Juan's initial attempts to sell his pots locally failed, he came to have success with border merchants who sold the pots on the US side where MacCallum discovered them in the thrift shop. An anthropologist and art collector, MacCallum tracked Quezada down and helped him break into the larger US market.

 

ENTER WALT PARKS                                                                                                                    

Another stroke of luck for Quezada and Mata Ortiz pottery came through Walt Parks, a financial analyst with a Stanford MBA and a love of pottery, who created an artistic and economic miracle in Mata Ortiz by peddling its pots. He'd met Juan in Palm Springs in 1984 where the potter was teaching a class at an art center. Between that first meeting and 2001, Parks took over 50 trips to Mata Ortiz. In 1993 he authored a book titled The Miracle of Mata Ortiz: Juan Quezada and the Potters of Northern Chihuahua. 

Parks called Mata Ortiz before Juan Quezada's pottery renaissance a village with a past but no future. Along with Juan, the former analyst nurtured its growth, bringing the villagers' pots to the US where he arranged exhibitions, classes and acted as an unpaid translator and advisor. When asked why, he responded, "If you'd had a chance to work with Pablo Picasso in a new art movement, wouldn't you have done it too?"

Now, thanks to a couple lucky breaks and the yearnings and talent of a young boy to re-create the beauty he found in ancient pottery shards as he picked firewood in the rugged state of Chihuahua, homeland to the Tarahumara and Apache Indians as well as Spanish, Chinese and Mormon immigrants, Juan Quezada, once a poor woodcutter, has become the Picasso of Mexican ceramics.

PREMIO NACIONAL DE LOS ARTES

Said Spencer MacCallum, Quezada has received the Premio Nacional de los Artes, the highest honor Mexico gives to living artists. "Quezada's life is like a fairy tale. And it doesn't hurt a fairy tale to be true, does it?"

One of Quezada's foremost potters, Jorge Quintana, said, "We owe it to Juan; he's the teacher. Without Juan, Mata Ortiz would have perished like all the other desert towns that relied on the timber industry."

Which is why the people in the area sing corridos—ballads—in honor of Quezada. "All Chihuahua wants to give you thanks," one song says. "To our great teacher, our friend, Juan Quezada."

Juan Quezada is 81 years old and father of eight children. He lives a rural life, having moved from the town of Mata Ortiz to a ranch nearby that overlooks the banks of the Palangalas River. He named the ranch Rancho Barro Blanco (White Clay Ranch) in honor of the pottery. 

Juan Quezada in Mata Ortiz

CALIFORNIA CONNECTION

In Santa Barbara, California, 10 West Gallery, an artist-owned cooperative founded by Jan Ziegler, sells Mata Ortiz pottery. The gallery owner makes regular trips south of the border to obtain new inventory and will have new pots this fall. The gallery is located at 10 West Anapamu Street.

10 West Gallery Mata Ortiz Pottery

10 West Gallery Mata Ortiz Pottery 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy.

                                                      

HOW CAN MEXICO ADDRESS ITS STREET DOG PROBLEM?

Smiley, My Favorite Beach Dog

Mexico has many, many street and beach dogs. If you've been to Mexico, you've seen them—animals without a home, often hungry, sometimes unhealthy or hurt, sleeping on dusty pueblo streets. 

Unfortunately, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, Mexico leads the pack in Latin America for the highest number of street dogs. Of roughly 18 million dogs in Mexico, 70 percent live on the street.

HISTORY

Mexico street dogs are scrappy and street-wise, a catch-all breed that most likely descends from stray and feral dog populations that roam the country's streets and beaches. Often these dogs aren't companion animals but forced to become self sufficient scavengers, canines closely related to dogs that roamed thousands of years ago.

PUERTO MORELOS

We were in Puerto Morelos for years and eventually ran into Smiley, one of the town's beach dogs. He started to hang out on our beach, coming for weeks at a time, and going equally as much. Beach dogs develop an attachment to people for a while, then move on. At times he was there every morning and he'd join me on my beach walks. People thought he was my dog. Nope, he's a beach dog I'd say. 

Beach dogs are uncannily smart and always seem to know where their next meal will come from. Before he made his way down to our beach a kilometer from the square, we'd seen him around town, not unlike his mother, Princess Coconut. Coconut was named by the staff at Johnny Cairo's, a local restaurant, where she hung out. She was a permanent fixture at the front entrance, and they gave her a pink rhinestone collar, thus the name. She'd follow young tourist couples who had doggie bags right out the restaurant door. Smiley had learned his tricks from Coconut. They'd follow the couple for a week, then move on. Maybe it was the best of all worlds. They'd have effusive love and food for a short while, but when things got too permanent, time for a change.

For me, I could always tell when it was time for Smiley to leave. He'd join me under the palapa where I'd read daily, lying on the sand next to me. Then one day he'd be a bit farther away, then the next—mid beach—then finally, at the shoreline. He would turn and give one last wag and trot off. A couple weeks later he'd resurface. No chagrin; he needed his space. And we always welcomed him back with open arms. 

We tried to take him to the vet once—but that didn't work out well. Somehow we wrangled a collar around his neck and nudged him into the back seat of the car. That lasted about two seconds. He pulled out of the collar in a move that would have made Houdini proud, jetted out of the car and into the yard. He waited for us at the gate, expectantly and a little nervous. Of course we obliged, opened the gate, and he bolted out into the sascab road. So much for good intentions.

ISSUES

Why does Mexico have a stray dog problem? The street dog issue—in Mexico and elsewhere—is complicated. Sometimes it comes down to pet owners who bit off more than they could chew, but often it comes down to limited access to spay and neuter programs—the keys to solving animal homelessness in the country. Often too in Mexico, dogs are expected to find their own food. It's a horrible sight to see homeless dogs, but even worse when they're starving.

Luckily there are many organizations and pet rescue associations that aim to spay or neuter dogs or find them a new home. Here's a list of pet rescue organizations in the Riviera Maya. If you live in Mexico and want a dog, consider adopting one from an organization such as those listed below. It's also not hard to re-patriate dogs, and organizations like these can set you up with the right forms and information on getting your new pooch from Point A to Point B.

Sparky on Isla Mujeres (photo Lynda L. Lock)

Author Lynda L. Lock, formerly of Isla Mujeres, adopted Sparky, a spunky little Heinz 57, who was so captivating he worked his way into her Isla Mujeres Mystery series, beginning with a cameo in book number one, Treasure Isla. And it didn't stop there! In the photo above, one can easily see he acclimated to his Life of Riley, waiting in his personal golf cart for the caddy to bring his clubs.

Many Mexican dogs find new homes abroad. This list of pet rescue services and organizations from Cancun down to Chetumal, though far from complete, is a start if you're thinking of taking a little bit of Mexico home with you in the form of a furry, four-legged creature. If you're local and need assistance with health issues or neutering, these organizations can assist or point you in the right direction. If you're not from Quintana Roo, locate a "pet rescue" organization in your area through Facebook. Many of the organizations need assistance in the work they do and if you're on an extended vacation and want to show support, get in touch and offer your services. Your love and kindness can create a whole new world for a stray and add an extra spoonful of sugar to your life as well. Viva Mexico! 

CANCUN

Cancun Animal Rescue and Adoption

Contact through Facebook page.

Riviera Rescue AC (Rescue-Foster-Adopt)

Contact Matteo Saucedo through Facebook page.

HOLBOX

Refugio Animal Holbox

Contact through Facebook page.

ISLA MUJERES

Isla Animals, Isla

Contact through Facebook page.

Clinica Veterinaria de Isla Mujeres AC

Contact through Facebook page.

PUERTO MORELOS

Food Bank for Cats and Dogs Puerto Morelos

Contact Claudia Mendiola through Facebook page.

Puerto Morelos Sterilization Project

Contact Betsy Walker through Facebook page.

Puerto Morelos Cause4Paws

Contact Diane Curtis through Facebook page.

Riviera Rescue AC

Contact Matteo Saucedo through Facebook page.

PLAYA DEL CARMEN

The Snoopi Project-Riviera Maya

Contact through Facebook page.

Coco's Animal Welfare, Playa del Carmen

Contact Coco through Facebook page.

SOS El Arca

Contact through Facebook page.

AKUMAL

Street Dog Strides

Contact through Facebook page.

TULUM

Alma Animal Tulum AC

Contact Alma through Facebook page.

Help Tulum Dogs

Contact through Facebook page.

MAHAHUAL

Costa Maya Beach Dog Rescue, Mahahual

Contact Heather through Facebook page.

CHETUMAL

Pancitas Felices, Chetumal

Contact Karla through Facebook page.

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy.

THE MAGNIFICENT MAYA CALENDAR SYSTEM AND HOW IT WORKS

Maya Calendar (historyonthenet.com)

"The deep time of the Maya calendar is stunning in its scale. . . It expressed the grandest expressions of time ever put down on stone or paper by human minds." David Stuart, archeologist and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient.  

THE CALENDARS

What if you thought of a calendar—or time—as a spiral, not a sheaf of papers that hang on a wall?

The Maya viewed time differently than we do today with the Gregorian calendar. The present was determined by the past. Everything repeated, everything was a recurring pattern. They only had to view the past to know what would happen in the future. Their intricate system of separate calendars was possibly used for predictions, say some archaeologists like Michael Coe, though others would disagree. It is widely thought that they borrowed the system from their Mesoamerican neighbors, the Olmec.

True Maya Calendar from Madrid Codex

Three calendars were a staple of every day Maya life. This triumvirate includes the Tzol'kin, or sacred round, which lasts 260 days; the Haab', which is a 360-day "solar"calendar to coordinate with the total number of days it takes the earth to rotate around the sun but with five 'days that had no name' at the end coming to 365; and the Long Count calendar, one of the most important cycles of Maya time, which lasts 5,125 years and which had been forecast to end on December 21, 2012.

COUNT OF DAYS

The 260-day Tzol'kin calendar is religious in its bearing. The count of days, as it is also known, was invented by pairing two smaller cycles—numbers one through thirteen—which equals the number of layers in Maya heaven, and the cycle of the twenty "day" names. The Tzol'kin is formed as a circle, not as a straight line.

"There is nothing quite like it, anywhere else in the world, " says archaeo-astronomer Anthony Aveni, author of The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012. "The sacred Tzol'kin is the centerpiece of the Maya calendar system; it is the single most important chunk of time the Maya ever kept, and still keep, in remote areas.

"But why 260?" pondered Aveni. "Multiply numbers thirteen and twenty? Also the Venus cycle's appearance as morning or evening star is 263 days."

Aveni believes that 260 days came about as some enlightened daykeeper, eons ago, realized this particular number signified so much.

FOCAL HARMONY

"It was a focal harmony point. It brought together so many of nature's phenomena: the moon, Venus, planting cycles. It may not have come about in a flash," he continues, "but with Maya knowledge that number and nature are joined together perfectly, the discovery of the multiple significance of 260 was bound to be raised to prominence in Maya time consciousness. One even took their name and their fortune from the day name in the 260-day count calendar."

COMMUNING WITH THE GODS

Maya God Images (mayangods.com)

The Tzol'kin could have been used for making predictions, for communicating with the gods. The Maya believed a god ruled each day, and depending on that god's traits, it could be good or bad for certain activities. This calendar was used in the way one's horoscope would be viewed today.

The calendar is easy to remember and that's why it has been passed down and is still in use. It fits into the culture of the people, said Barbara Tedlock, anthropologist and author of Time and the Highland Maya.

The Haab' calendar, which works with the Tzol'kin, has 18 named "months" of 20 calendar days each. The Maya then added five days at the end of this 360-day cycle. It was considered a nineteenth month and these five odd days were considered unlucky but essential to bring a total of 365 days for a full rotation cycle.

Caracol Observatory at Chichen Itzá

CALENDAR ROUND

These two calendars, like cogs in a wheel, meshed a named day in the Tzol'kin and also had a conjunct day in the Haab'. But this same "double" day could never reproduce again for 52 years, roughly the length of a human life. This was called the calendar round, and the only annual time count possessed by the people of Mexico. There were 260 possible different combinations of number and name in this creation. A Maya Calendar Round date is actually two dates listed as a pair, with a separate reference point.

Night Star Gazing at Chichen Itza (by Chichenitza.com)

In this combined calendar round, slippage occurred because a year is actually 365.24 days which as mathematicians and stargazers extraordinaire they had computed, but this did not bother the Maya. Nor did they try to play catch up like we do with leap years. They just let time roll along.

"That would mean Christmas could back up to early fall or the Fourth of July might back up into the cold of winter for us," said Anthony Aveni. "It wasn't of concern to the Maya," he continued, "because they placed more emphasis on following an unbroken chain of time."

52-YEAR CYCLE

This 52-year cycle combination was celebrated throughout Mesoamerica. The Aztecs included it in their fire ceremony that was timed by sky events. At midnight, when the calendar keepers saw the Pleiades had passed the zenith, they knew the movements of the heavens hadn't stopped, the world had not ended, and they would have another 52 years. 

Third in the triumvirate of Maya calendars is the Long Count and although widely used in Mesoamerica, the Maya took it to its highest degree during the classic period. The Long Count consisted of 13 baktuns. One baktun is 400 years. The starting point of the Long Count calendar, according to early archeologist Eric Thompson, was August 11, 3114 BC. It was known as 4 Ahaw.

13TH BAKTUN

This date may have been chosen because it coincided with the completion of a cycle of successful crops, an August summer's day. If you flash forward 5,125 years you come to the cycle's end, and this is where the December 21, 2012 debate came in. It also ended the thirteenth baktun cycle, an auspicious time for the Maya or 13.0.0.0.0. as carved on Maya stela.

Oldest Known Maya Mural, San Bartolo, Guatemala (by sciencenews.com)

Aveni goes on to explain the Maya used this innovation in their calendar so royalty could create a dynastic narrative that covered vast stretches of elapsed time. It extended Maya culture all the way back to the creation of the gods, cementing the reputation of daykeepers and royalty as gods themselves.

DAYKEEPERS

The daykeepers act as go-betweens. "They are empowered to make prayers to the gods and ancestors on behalf of the lay people," Barbara Tedlock said.

Maya Scribe

He or she pays attention to each and every day, making offerings of copal incense and lighting candles; they also do dream interpretations. Through dreams and reading the day's influence, recommendations were then made for the best course of action and both were used to plot one's future. Barbara Tedlock, anthologist along with her husband Dennis, author, translator and anthrologist, were initiated as daykeepers in a Guatemala highlands pueblo where they lived from 1975 to 1979, a very unusual occurrence for those not of Maya descent. 

It's hard for the modern world to fathom why such a complex calendar system existed. Michael Coe, archeologist and author of The Maya (Editions one through eight), stated his belief of the why's and wherefores like this: "How such a period of time even came into being is an enigma, but the use to which it was put is clear: Every single day had its own omens and associations and the march of the twenty days acted like a fortune-telling machine guiding the destinies of all the Maya and the peoples of Mexico who used this calendar. It still survives in unchanged form among some indigenous peoples of southern Mexico and the Maya highlands, under the guard of the calendar priests."

Maya Stela of Ruler

With this calendar fashioned as a direct line to the cosmos, royalty and priests were able to govern and control the masses by predicting common events. Most likely with the aid of their calendars and the predictions derived from them, the Maya enjoyed 1500 years of relative stability. It was not until ninth century AD, the finale of the classic period of the Maya, that the Long Count was abandoned and not seen again on Maya stela. Times were changing. One wonders if the stars and calendars predicted that. And I would guess that yes, they did.

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy.*

*Excerpts of Chapter 6 from my book Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy were used in the post.

BUENOS AIRES SITS NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD BUT THRIVES IN EVERY WAY

 

Tango Attire in Buenos Aires

LOVE LETTER TO BUENOS AIRES

Buenos Aires is a thriving, elegant city situated at the end of the world. It doesn't seem possible that this phenomenon of a metropolis exists on the outset of the North American time zone (five hours earlier than San Francisco) so very far away from everything. It's like it just popped up, with lavish Paris style buildings, lush and well-thought out parks, magical tree buttresses the size of Volkswagens, fast drivers but patient citizens, grocery stores with vegetable sections that could vie for a Bon Appetit centerfold, each tomato, avocado, head of lettuce meticulously placed, tempting a caress.                 

                                                                               

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RESTAURANTS

Restaurants, too many to count, serving grass fed beef you can cut with a spoon, salads with up to five 'gustos' or additions: tomatoes, onions, corn, peas, carrots, beets. Old world waiters in starched white shirts, black bowties and waist-high aprons—even at the smallest coffee shops—seating you with a nod or a flourish, then standing by as you ponder the menu. The city's fixated on food, with the popular parrilla leading the way, followed by a concentration of Italian eateries from high end to pizzeria. Every other food appears too, with plentiful choices. Argentina's turn of the century melting pot had no limits: Italian, Greek, Spanish, Irish, French, Chinese, Indian, English, German, and now the occasional gringo.

Rio Alba Restaurant (by author)

                                                                                                

ARCHITECTURE

Ultra modern high-rise apartments intertwine with ancient buildings, some in disrepair like the sidewalks, where busy passersby go about their daily routines. Trees line the streets, stretching stories high, home to birds singing lovely solos, too melodic to seem real. Buses, subways and taxis move the active locals from Point A to B. Average stature, thin and trim, intelligence level high. Everyone has an opinion and you'll hear it if you ask. A common phrase: God is everywhere but serves in Argentina. There's a quick wit and readiness to laugh. Strangers help with questions, no rebuffs.

Summer weather (north of the equator's winter) borders on godly—mid-eighties with light humidity, just enough to make my hair have a little tweak. Short sleeves and sandals, the clothing of choice.

Flea markets appear in countless parks on weekends in contrast to high-end stores like Hermes and Yves Saint Laurent in various chic parts of town. Elderly women walk with doting daughters on their elbows, afternoon strolls to who knows where.

The peso fluctuates constantly, with two deep cuts on the heels of the 2000 debacle that brought this thriving country to its knees. But still, the Porteños find time to tango.

TANGO

La Boca, where tango was born, still compels locals and tourists alike to throng El Caminito, to watch non-stop street tango performed by tango dancers extraordinaire. La Boca, which means 'the mouth' in Spanish, was once literally the mouth of Buenos Aires as it's located in what used to be the city's biggest port. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrants set up shop in the surrounding vicinity, working the docks, earning a wage, while yearning for their far away homelands. From these cravings was born the tango. The haphazard shanty houses, still standing, line the streets, made from sheet metal and wooden planks and painted in bright colors. 

La Boca streets (by author)

While strolling through La Boca, we took a seat at an outdoor cafe to have a café and watch street tango. This conversation floated my way.

"We're not American," I heard the guy next to me tell the waiter in Spanish as he looked over his check. 

Every restaurant table was filled in La Boca. The sun was out and so were the tourists."Why are you charging me to use a fork?"

That was a new spin. I'd lived in Mexico for years and had a knack for detecting certain discrepancies. But using a fork carried a surcharge? That was a new spin. The discussion heated up as his girlfriend got involved. I tuned out.

Time to watch the passersby and the street-side tango. What legs she had, the dancer, in an off-blue high slit backless dress. Dark hair with high sheen, pulled back in a low bun. I'd heard the sad lonely song from the bandoleon somewhere before. Her partner, black suit, white shirt, Cuban hat, moved along with her ignoring the crowd.

Tango Dancers (by author)

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy. 

Wood Mural in La Boca, Buenos Aires (by author)

DID 2012 MAYA CALENDAR'S LONG-COUNT END DATE USHER IN AN EPOCH OF CHANGE?

 

Scribe on Maya plate

Have we entered a new epoch that began in 2012? You may recall the 2012 Maya calendar kerfuffle. First off, the media got it wrong. The Maya never predicted the world would end on the last day of their thirteenth baktun in the Maya Long Count cycle. But Maya elders did say we were in for a time of transition. Is that transition now?

As a Mayaphile and student of Maya culture, I wrote Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, to quash false information about the supposed "end date" in their Long Count calendar, one of 28 in the time-obsessed Maya system, that was being dangled like a piece of fresh meat before a pack of hungry wolves. The calendar simply rolled over into a new cycle and they started counting anew.

Maya Calendar (Historyonthenet.com)

But old habits die hard and just over a year ago a ruckus erupted over a tweet that suggested the Maya 2012 end of the world prophecy was off by a good eight years. That catapulted said end date smack dab into the cross hairs of 2020 —what a year that ended up being. 

The prediction however was not made by an eminent Maya academic or even a calendar researcher, but by plant biologist and Fulbright scholar at University of Tennessee, Paolo Tagalogquin. His Twitter account has since been deleted.

With ongoing global events, that very possibility—the world ending—may have crossed your mind.  And for the beginning of "the end" to start in 2020? Well, we've lived through two years of continuous threat from a raging pandemic still not fully in check. Let it be said some of us may have considered that to be a precursor of things to come. But it looks like we're still standing.

END OF 13TH BAKTUN

To explain biologist Tagalogquin's reasoning, apparently he did a math re-do on the Julian calendar that dates back to 8 CE and was used until the Gregorian or Christian calendar came into being in 1752. After his calculations, he came up with this tweet: "Following the Julian calendar, we are technically in 2012. The number of days lost in a year due to the shift into the Gregorian calendar is 11 days. For 268 years using the Gregorian calendar (1752 - 2020) times 11 days equals 2,948 days / 365 (per year) equals eight years."

The subtext: I assume you have your affairs in order.

Dresden Codex providing clues to Maya calendars (NGS photo)

Back in 2012, some believed December 21, 2012, might be the end. The media blared non-stop that this was when the Maya Long Count calendar completed a 5, 125 year cycle known as the 13th baktun. The ancient Maya, an advanced culture of mathematicians (they invented zero) and naked eye astronomers, viewed this moment as consequential.

CALENDAR SHUFFLE

Why is this even important? If the Maya code had not been deciphered a few decades ago, we wouldn't even have known that an end date to the Long Count calendar existed.

In researching the Maya end date, I realized that converting both Julian and Gregorian calendars to the Maya calendar had been no easy task. Spanish speaking priests were used for the conversion and needed to interact with the Maya who had their own language. Not only was there room for error in language differences, but the Julian calendar had gone through several trial runs over the centuries as the world coped with a one-time-fits-all calendar system.

During the conversion, some countries used different calendar renditions simultaneously, and some time in the 1500s while trying to play catch-up, eleven days were lost in a single month. My overall impression: whoever had been relegated to configure dates from Julian to Gregorian to Maya had stared down an impossible undertaking. And furthermore, who was their fact checker?

RIGOBERTA MENCHÚ CHEN

As the end date blossomed into a full-on media phenomenon, I took a wider view of the "Maya prophecy" as it came to be known. Great change doesn't happen overnight and can span decades or even centuries, and as with all things Maya, the present is determined by the past. Everything repeats. Everything is a recurring pattern.

Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Nobel Laureate

In 2012 Nobel laureate and author Rigoberto Menchú Tum, a Ki'che' Maya from Guatemala who was forced to leave her country when her government disappeared thousands of indigenous Maya, said this, "There are a lot of people speaking for the Maya with little respect for the sacred Maya calendar or the culture.

TIME DOES NOT EXIST

"For us, the Maya, during this phase, time does not exist. Time is completely dispersed. It is 'disordered time,' when the greatest breakdown of humanity will occur, plagued by loneliness, stress and fear.

"The Maya elders say if we do not take right action today, one-quarter of the people of the earth will perish."

Tum said this in 2012. Flash forward to 2020—especially the "plagued by loneliness, stress and fear" part of her quote and we can cast her as a Cassandra-like figure in light of the Covid pandemic. And we can all agree that in the past several years numerous issues have caused hardship: floods, hurricanes, raging fires, wars, racial inequality and unwarranted deaths. The stark reality of all the above drives away any hope for a soon to be bright future.

A MOMENT OF CHAOS

Maya Renaissance film by PeaceJam

In a documentary film, 2012: The True Mayan Prophecy, Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff, film makers and founders of the non-profit PeaceJam, interviewed Maya elders along with Menchú Tum. In the interview, Menchú Tum said we're living in a moment of chaos, and though there is global disorder, 2012 would usher in a more balanced period, if only we allow it.

DISORDERED TIME

"A new time is drawing near so it is important to maintain the light shining in these days, and our personal and collective light," she said. "We are passing through a period of disordered time which began in 1992 and will last forty years. There are things that happened that are not merely caused by people. It is the age, the energy, the cosmos."

TRANSITION TAKES TIME

In the film, Menchú Tum references her spiritual advisors, Maria Faviana Chocoy Alva and Pedro Celestino Pac Noy, who state that apocalyptic predictions misrepresent the true meaning of the end of the Maya Long Count cycle known as the thirteenth baktun. Their position is that this would be a time of great transition.

Calendar cycle cogs (By DK)

Who cannot agree that this is a time of transition, said Menchú Tum. "For humanity, it is the darkest of times. Humanity is being called to a great respon-sibility, affected by our actions. We call them natural disasters but they are not natural. Much pain is already occurring."

Again, Menchú Tum's sagacious predictions are synonymous with what we are presently living with—the human pain endured by the Covid pandemic, the earth's pain due to our disconnect from Mother Nature, and the atrocities humans have unleashed on the planet. Time, as the Maya might say, will tell.

                         **************

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy.