Did the Maya predict the end of the world in 2012 ?

The whole craze over the supposed Maya prophecy of the end of the world in 2012 is based on bogus, commercialized, fake claims. The D-day ("destruction day) is one year off: December 21, 2012. This will not be the end of the world, nor will it mark a new era of enlightenment. The ancient Maya had numerous very accurate calendars. All of them were cyclical in that they came to an end and started over at zero. December 21, 2012 is merely the re-start date of the "Long count calendar," a count of days that started back in 3114 BC (well, at some point in the first millennium AD, the Maya extrapolated the Long count back to a zero date thousands of years earlier).

The Maya Long count calendar is just like the odometer on a car. There are five digits, and it ticks one digit for every day. Here are some dates:

8.12.14.8.15  ----  July 2, 292 (a date from the Maya city of Tikal)
12.19.18.17.15 ---- December 21, 2011 (today)
12.19.17.19.19  ----  December 20, 2012
0. 0. 0. 0. 0   ----   December 21, 2012

The 2012 text from Tortuguero

(This is a base-20 numbering system, with the middle digit only going up to 18 before repeating).

So, what did the Maya predict would happen on the zero date? There is exactly one (count 'em, one) ancient Maya hieroglpyhic text that talks about this, monument 6 at the site of Tortuguero (see photo at right). Apart from the fact that key parts of the monument are broken, the text is a bit enigmatic. One recent translation (from Gronemeyer & MacLeod 2010) reads:

• It will be completed the thirteenth Baktun [i.e., the end of the cycle]
• It is 4 Ajaw 3 Kankin [the day and month designations]
• And it will happen a "seeing"
• It is the display of [the god] Bolon-Yokte
• In a great "investiture."

- Gronemeyer, Sven and Barbara MacLeod  (2010)  What Could Happen in 2012: A Re-Analysis of the 13-Bak'tun Prophecy on Tortuguero Monument 6. Wayeb Notes vol. 34. Wayeb: European Association of Mayanists.


Hmmmmm, this is not about the end of the world, or a new beginning. It is an enigmatic statement that some god (whom we know next to nothing about) will show up on that date.

So why does everyone go around talking about the end of the world? Try typing "2012 Maya prophecy" into the search window in Amazon.com. There are more than 100 books about this topic. People are making money by inventing bogus claims about the 2012 Maya Long count event. It is a commercial feeding frenzy, involving wildly inaccurate and made-up claims by fake scholars. Read my lips:

THE MAYA DID NOT PREDICT THE END OF THE WORLD IN 2012.

The Maya were accomplished astronomers, mathematicians, and scientists. They devised a whole series of incredibly accurate calendars. They invented the concept of zero. They extended the Long count calendar more than a millennium into the future. But they die NOT predict the end of the world. To read about Maya calendars and culture, and some scientific details about the 2012 nonsense, read any of these books, all by recognized experts in the field:

Aveni, Anthony F.  (2009)  The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.

Restall, Matthew and Amara Solari  (2011)  2012 and the End of the World. Rowman and Littlefield, New York.

Stuart, David  (2011)  The Order of Days: The Maya world and the Truth About 2012. Random House, New York.

Van Stone, Mark  (2010)  2012: Science and Prophecy of the Ancient Maya. Tlacaelel Press (private publication, Imperial Valley, CA.

But please avoid the nonsense found in commercial books on Amazon.com. Check out the authors on the internet. The authors of the books listed above are all recognizied experts, easy to tell from a number of websites.

Aztec astronomer observes the stars

But what about the Aztecs?

It turns out that the Aztecs DID predict the end of the world. Their priests observed the heavens, and their mythology predicted the destruction of the world. This will come at the end of a 52-year calendar cycle, but we don't know which cycle! At the end of each cycle, the Aztecs would put out all their fires and wait around to see if the sun would rise again for a new period of 52 years. New fires were then lit (it was called the "New Fire Ceremony"), and the world was saved for another 52 years. The last such ceremony before Cortés arrived took place in 1507. To read more about this, check out the new 3rd edition of my book, The Aztecs, in which I've boosted the coverage of the New Fire Ceremony.

Lighting of the Aztec New Fire+

When I was an undergraduate, we extended the Aztec calendar forward (now you can do that easily on the internet; back then it was a lot of hand calculations). We discovered that there was a 52-year cycle completion in the middle of a semester! We had a blow-out, end-of-the-world party, which was fun, but the world did not end (although I think it may have felt that way the next morning). The next scheduled cycle completion will be in the year 2027.

As an Aztec specialist, this whole Maya 2012 nonsense really bugs me. The Maya always get all the publicity, and the Aztecs get very little. The Maya are always on the History Channel or in National Geographic Magazine. Maya, Maya, Maya! We Aztec specialists often get an inferiority complex with respect to the Maya.

The Aztecs actually DID predict the end of the world, but who gets all the credit for ancient prophecies for doom and destruction: the Maya, who didn't even make such prophecies.

This morning, I was interviewed on local TV about the Maya 2012 bit. I didn't get to say very much, but check out the video.

Problems with Bourdieu? We can help! Call now.

I find that I am not the only one puzzling over the infatuation of archaeologists with the work of Pierre Broudieu and other incomprehensible French social philosophers. Here are some suggestions about what an archaeoalogist can do:


(1) Steve Lekson: Use other theorists who are more grounded and make sense.

Steven Lekson has an amusing post, "La Maladie Française" on his blog, The Southwest in the World. This blog is fascinating - it consists of chapters and parts of chapters of a book that Lekson is in the process of writing. Readers can follow his book as it is constructed, quite an innovative process. This particular post is about the convoluted prose of Bourdieu, de Certeau, et al. Lekson says:

"I have from time to time disparaged French social philosophy.  It’s not so much the content (it’s that too), but rather the language.  To paraphrase Professor Higgins, the French don’t care what they say actually, so long as they write it properly.  Which, for French social philosophers, means convoluted, obtuse, ambiguous, impenetrable — well-known hallmarks of French philosophy, generally."

After posting several choice uncomprehensible quotes., Lekson lists some archaeological theoreticians. who write clearly and comprehensibly. He says:

"Theory does not require Delphic obscurantism.  Many useful thinkers think clearly and write clearly.  I list several below – a quick, short list with only a few works for each.  Some are old and some not so old.  You must judge if their thinking is useful (I find it so).   But – and this is key – you can judge their thinking directly on its merits, and not as faith that something useful lies buried in the verbiage."

(2) Robert Rosenswig: Why cite Bourdieu and Giddens when Marx said it better?

In an interesting paper, Robert Rosenswig notes that many archaeologists cite Bourdieu and Giddens without engaging with their work. He compares their perspective on agency and practice to the ideas of Marx. But whereas Marx presented a materialist theory of agency, these scholars promote an idealist version. Rosenswig advocates a return to Marx's materialist theory of modes of production and social change.

Rosenswig, Robert
2011    Materialism, Mode of Production, and a Millennium of Change in Southern Mexico. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 18:(in press).


(3) Andrew Abbott: Bourdieu contributes nothing new; avoid abstract social theory.

I've raved about Andrew Abbott's (2004) very useful book several times in this blog, here, here, and here.  Abbott is not a big fan of high-level abstract social theory:

·         “A good idea, then, ought to have some referent in the real world. This is not to deny the utility of pure social theory, but the vast majority of social theory consists of relabeling. All real theory arises in empirical world, in the attempt to make sense of the social world, no matter how abstractly construed. A student is well advised to stay clear of writing pure theory. It’s an open invitation to vacuity .... Relabeling is a general activity in social science because it’s a way of appearing novel without having to do much.” (p. 218).

In another passage, Abbott explicitly calls Bourdieu's concept of habitus as a simple relabeling of concepts long used in sociology.

Abbott, Andrew
2004    Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences. Norton, New York.

Other prominent sociologists who have little use for Bourdieu include Jon Elster, Raymond Boudon, Peter Hedström, Robert Sampson, and Charles Tilly. Also check out philosopher of science  Mario Bunge (1995).

Bunge, Mario
1995    In Praise of Intolerance to Charlatanism in Academia. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 775:96-115.


(4) Yours truly: You can do rigorous theoretically-informed research without bothering with Bourdieu et al.

As detailed in my paper on urban theory (Smitih 2011), archaeologists interested in causality and explanation can conduct their research and engage with theory on an epistemological level below that of high-level, philosophical, social theory (I wrote that paper before reading Abbott). I call such theory "empirical theory." In the social sciences (outside of archaeology) such theory is labeled "middle-range theory," drawing on the concept by Robert K. Merton (which has nothing to do with Lewis Binford's idiosyncratic concept of the same name). I got tired of grant proposals and articles by archaeologists (students and professionals) in which the authors spend a lot of time waxing poetic about Giddens and Bourdieu, and then go on to describe their research in rather pedestrian terms that ignore the theory entirely. If you are not going to USE theory, then don't waste your time talking about it. Better still, find empirical theory that you CAN use to plan and carry out your fieldwork and to analyze your data.

Smith, Michael E.
2011    Empirical Urban Theory for Archaeologists. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 18:167-192.

For further clarification of different kinds of theory (and how high-level theory relates to middle-range causal theory), see also my earlier post "Theory, theory theory: What do we mean by theory?"

More on predatory journals

As a follow-up to my post on Jeffrey' Beall's list of "predatory open access journals" (see my previous post on this) (Beall's original post is here; see also here),  Open Access journalist and advocate Richard Poynder has posted an interesting interview with the founder and Managing Director of one of the target companies:

The Open Access Interviews: OMICS Publishing Group’s Srinu Babu Gedela.

Srinu Babu Gedela, or course, denies that OMICS is a predatory publisher.

Poynder suggests that the research community should accept some of the responsibility for these bogus journals. After all, thousands of researchers (including archaeologists) have agreed to serve on the editorial boards of these journals, and perhaps review articles for them.

Richard Poynder does research and journalism about Open Access. I highly recommend his blog, Open and Shut. If you want to explore Open Access in more detail, I highly recommend Poynder's extended interviews in a series called the "Basement Interviews" (follow the link on the main page). The first two interviews, at the bottom of the list, are with Steven Harnad and Peter Suber, my two heroes in the Open Access movement.

"Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory"

A new online journal has just started publishing. "Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory."

 According to its mission statement, the journal:

"aims to situate ethnography as the prime heuristic of anthropology, and return it to the forefront of conceptual developments in the discipline.

The journal is motivated by the need to reinstate ethnographic theorization in contemporary anthropology as a potent alternative to its 'explanation' or 'contextualization' by philosophical arguments, moves which have resulted in a loss of the discipline's distinctive theoretical nerve. By drawing out its potential to critically engage and challenge Western cosmological assumptions and conceptual determinations, HAU aims to provide an exciting new arena for evaluating ethnography as a daring enterprise for 'worlding' alien terms and forms of life, by exploiting their potential for rethinking humanity and alterity."


In looking around the journal website and its first issue, I became confused about the meaning of the term "ethnography." I always thought it meant fieldwork, the first-hand gathering of social or cultural data through participant observation. The initial article, by David Graeber, is a reworking of ethnographic data from others about Shilluk divine kingship. The second, by Marshal Sahlins, is about kingship in ancient Sparta, which doesn't seem very ethnographic. I guess if you can get a paper by someone as prominent as Sahlins, you don't worry too much about sticking to your specifications. Or maybe I am mistaken in my conception of "ethnography." I have to admit that I pay less attention to anthropology than I used to, particularly since resigning from the American Anthropological Association. And then there are some papers on kinship, a few theoretical papers, English translations of three papers by Maurice Godelier, and some reprints of classic anthropology articles by Evans-Pritchard and others.

I guess this is what they mean by ethnography (also from the mission statement):

"Topics addressed by the journal include indigenous ontologies and systems of knowledge, forms of human engagement and relationality, cosmology and myth, magic, witchcraft and sorcery, truth and falsehood, indigenous theories of kinship and relatedness with humans and non-humans, hierarchy, materiality, perception, environment and space, time and temporality, personhood and subjectivity, alternative metaphysics of morality."

Hmmm, what about economics and politics? Personally, I'm more interested in how Shilluk or Spartan kings collected taxes than in the symbolism and meaning of divine kingship. The topics covered in this new journal reside in one corner of the universe of cultural anthropology, leaving out big portions of scientific anthropology (or scientific ethnography), from medical to economic to cognitive to political anthropology. But still, this new journal looks much better than many offerings in cultural anthropology today, particularly in its focus on theory that is more empirically grounded and less philosophical (see my urban theory paper for my views on philosophical theory). Take a look at Hau.

"Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" and disciplinary myopia

In college, I took a course in French classical drama, and one of the few things I still recall is a quote from Molière's play, "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme." The protagonist discovers, to his astonishment, that he can speak prose:

"Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it!"

(Act II, scene 4: "Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j'en susse rien.")

I have recently had such a Molière moment. I have been reading works on research methods in political science and sociology (in preparation for a proposal where a group of us will have to make an argument for the value of comparative research ancient cities that will satisfy sociologists and political scientists). It looks like what we are doing is called "case study research" in those fields. I was excited (and daunted) to find a large methodological literature on case study research, and I have started rooting around in that literature. I can now exclaim, with the same pride as Molière's protagonist:

"Good heavens! For more than thirty years I have been doing case study research without knowing it."

In the non-anthropological social sciences, case-study research is presented as an alternative to the dominant quantitative-statistical methodological emphasis. The latter focuses on comparisons of variables across numerous cases, whereas the case-study approach uses much smaller samples and focuses on the cases.

So how is this helpful for archaeology? From one perspective, a familiarity with this literature will help me explain archaeological research to audiences in other disciplines. But more importantly, the case study literature has methodological insights that can help archaeologists design and carry out comparative research that is more rigorous and convincing. Topics discussed in that literature include sampling, case selection, constructing indicators, causal inferences, different sources of bias, and the like. In archaeology, methodological topics like this are discussed in print most commonly in the holocultural approach promoted by Peter Peregrine and others (see the journal Cross-Cultural Research). That body of work, and its related theme within sociocultural anthropology, is an example of variable-focused research. Why don't we have more of a methodological literature in archaeology for case-based comparative research? Addressing this lack was one of the reasons for publishing The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies (although we don't use the term "case study research" in that book).

So why hasn't someone linked up archaeology with this body of research before now? (Case study research is part of a larger, very interesting, and relevant field, that of social science history and historical sociology). I can better understand why social scientist methodologists have ignored archaeology, than why archaeologists have ignored broader trends in the social sciences. Well, it is the end of the semester, and I don't have time to rant and rave about this like I might be tempted to. Later, when I have read more of the case-study literature, I may write a methodological paper about how it relates to archaeology. In the meantime, I have found this paper a good intro to some of the issues:

Kiser, Edgar and Steve Pfaff
2010    Comparative-Historical Methodology in Political Sociology In Handbook of Politics: State and Society in Global Perspective, edited by Kevin T. Leight and J. Craig Jenkins, pp. 571-587. Springer, New York.

In a quick perusal of a number of books and edited collections, this one looks the best to me (that is, broadest and most relevant to archaeology):

Gerring, John
2007    Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. Cambridge University Press, New York.

I am a fan of Gerring's research in social science methods. Check out his website; it has most of his articles posted, descriptions of his book, book reviews, papers in progress, all kinds of good things. If you study ancient empires, you need to read Gerring et al 2011 on direct and indirect control.

Here are a few more works on case-based research in sociology and political science:

Byrne, David, and Charles C. Ragin (editors)
    2009    The Sage Handbook of Case-Based Methods. Sage, London.

Ragin, Charles C.
    1997    Turning the Tables: How Case-Oriented Research Challenges Variable-Oriented Research. Comparative Social Research 16:27-42.

Ragin, Charles C., and Howard S. Becker
    1992    What is a Case? Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Ragin has also published a number of more recent methodological books on the topic.

Predatory (Bogus) Open Access Journals

I just found a nice post, "Beall's list of Predatory, Open Access Journals." This is the definition given:

Predatory, open-access publishers are those that unprofessionally exploit the author-pays model of open-access publishing (Gold OA) for their own profit. Typically, these publishers spam professional email lists, broadly soliciting article submissions for the clear purpose of gaining additional income. Operating essentially as vanity presses, these publishers typically have a low article acceptance threshold, with a false-front or non-existent peer review process. Unlike professional publishing operations, whether subscription-based or ethically-sound open access, these predatory publishers add little value to scholarship, pay little attention to digital preservation, and operate using fly-by-night, unsustainable business models.

.

This definition is followed by a list of publishers, including Bentham Publishers. When their new journal, The Open Anthropology Journal, was announced in 2008, I expressed my sketicism in this blog, and then again when the first articles came out.

Here is the recommendation of Jeffrey Beall:

Recommendation: Do not do business with the above publishers, including submitting article manuscripts, serving on editorial boards, buying advertising, etc. There are numerous traditional, legitimate journals that will publish your quality work for free, including many legitimate, open-access publishers.

If you are involved in any form of scholarly evaluation such as, hiring, tenure / promotion review, or grant funding, be skeptical of articles published by any of these publishers listed above. Reading a list of publications or a vita, it is very difficult to distinguish legitimate journals from the illegitimate ones. One of the tricks the sham publishers use is to assign authentic-sounding and appearing titles to their journals. The presence of these bogus publishers has changed the task of scholarly evaluation, which now needs a keener eye to discern articles published in fraudulent journals.

Lest anyone think that "bogus" is too strong a word to use for these predatory journals, consider the apparent lack of rigorous peer review. In my classification of new journal-like venues, these would fall into the category of "pseudo-journals."