Maya Moon Cheat Sheet

Reuters 2:42 p.m. CDT, May 10, 2012 

 * Ancient scribe's wall inscriptions deciphered

 * Buried in a rainforest, pictures of a king

 By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON, May 10 (Reuters) - On the wall of a tiny structure buried under forest debris in Guatemala, archaeologists have discovered a scribe's notes about the Maya lunar calendar, which they say could be the first known records by an official chronicler of this ancient civilization.

 These notes pertain to the same Maya calendar that is sometimes erroneously thought to predict the world's end on or about Dec. 22, 2012. The researchers who helped uncover and decipher the wall's inscriptions said the Maya calendar foresaw a vast progression of time, with the December 2012 date the beginning of a new calendar cycle called a baktun.

 "They were looking at the way these cycles were turning," said William Saturno of Boston University, an author of an article on the find in the journal Science. "The Maya calendar is going to keep going and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future, a huge number that we can't even wrap our heads around."

 The faint numerical inscriptions on the wall in Guatemala measure out time in approximate six-month increments, based on six lunar cycles, with small stylized pictures of Maya gods to indicate which deity was the patron of a specific slice of time, the researchers said Thursday in an online briefing.

 "It seems pretty clear that what we have here is a lunar calendar," said David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin, another author of the Science article. The findings will also be published in the June issue of National Geographic, which funded some of the research.

 The numbers on the wall were likely written by a scribe or calendar priest, who would have been an important figure in the Maya court, where monarchs were keenly interested in astronomy and sought to harmonize sacred rituals with events in the sky.

 The wall was used the way a modern scientist might use a whiteboard, to write down frequently consulted formulas instead of having to look them up in a book, he said. The fact that these calendar details were inscribed on the wall preserved them better than any book would have, since no books remain from the period when the inscriptions were made, probably around 800 AD, the researchers said.

 In addition to the inscribed numbers, there were pictures on other walls of the structure, including an image of a king in a feather headdress, seated on a throne, with a white-garbed person peeking out from behind him. A painting of a scribe holding a stylus was on another wall. These paintings were the first Maya art to be found on the walls of a house, the researchers said.

 The structure, covered with vegetation, was detected in 2010 at the ruined Maya complex at Xultun in a rainforest area of Guatemala. Xultun, once home to tens of thousands of people, stretches over 12 square miles (31 square km), and thousands of the remaining structures have not yet been explored.

 "It's weird that the Xultun finds exist at all," Saturno said in a statement. "Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands, especially in a house buried only a meter below the surface."
(Reporting By Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Eric Walsh)

Phoebe knows

Damn Suzanne!

Fellow IU alumna Suzanne Collins wrote the best trilogy I've read this century. She's got all the details of Theseus wrong, but...

So NEW

Consider this a brain warm-up. I'm aiming for sense, but I'm not promising anything other than a tangent. This is what happens when I ride my bike.

You know that expression "there's nothing new under the sun"? People say that, as a way to excuse innovation. Or as a way to avoid disappointment, maybe. I know what it means, and then I'm not so sure.

But my question is, what's the innate value of "new," anyway?

I think we get excited about "new" because we're looking for a certain kind of chemical reaction in our brains. What teachers call the "aha! moment". When you perceive a problem (and I mean "problem" loosely...it could be a way to fish, or a beautiful way to cover the body, or a need to let your mind travel away from the bonds of day to day navigation), and then you are presented with a solution (be that a fish hook, a robe, or a story), your mind feels a sort of symmetry. The mice rest for a moment, satisfied, and then start the wheel up again in search of another nibble.

But as this impacts storytelling, I'm not even seeking the "new." Because stories are symbol processors, like the mathematical equations that combine and recombine elements in such quantities that they produce a variety of reactions: explosions, state changes, nothing at all. What I find vastly more challenging than generating a "new" reaction, is knowing the qualities and characteristics of each element so thoroughly that I can produce the same reaction - the "aha!" symmetry of problem and answer - repeatedly. In small ways from moment to moment, and in large narrative arcs that change the way you think about everything in a very subtle way, and which culminate in deep-seeded blossomings of perspective-shift.

This process relies on consistency more than novelty.

This is where the layering of history and culture provide an invaluable service: our minds work as referencing machines, digging up all the connections to one thing.

Headmistress

Immediately there are a multitude of qualities and characters associated with this word, this proto-character, this "being" suddenly exists in the mind of the reader.

I think of: old, gray, mean, deceptive, responsible. I think of Cruella de Ville, Catcher In the Rye, Cinderella's Step-Mother, and Anne of Green Gables. I think of Carol Burnett in the bathtub singing about "lavooooliers!" And A Little Princess, Facts of Life, Battle Royale...

When I create the character that "Headmistress" will become, I use all these - and the layering of others that I can't even think of right now - to gather and juxtapose qualities that create together a predictable moment of: "I know what to expect, and then I don't, and then it all makes sense...aaahhhhh."

I want this character to be both recognizable and remarkable, but not "new." I want you to know her when you meet her, so that as the story unfolds, you will be surprised by the choices she makes, but understand immediately why she's made them.

I'm not even sure we are seeking "new." I think we like it better when we are surprised by our own experience of recognition. Of seeing something again that we've seen before, which massages all those previously stimulated nodes and makes us feel the intense pleasure of those same sparks again and again.

There it is.

Miraculous blue dot

Tear up, stop at 2:10