Among other things, he marshals a lot of info about linguistic diffusion — it’s nothing I’m competent to evaluate, but seems intriguing.

Really interesting, thanks.

So in your view is there also no hard evidence for the 365-day calendar arriving shortly after the 260-day calendar was found lacking?

the start date is determined by backing out the calendar to the date 0.0.0.0.0, which as you mention places the origin in the 4th millenium bce. this is well before the Olmec or the Maya and (so the story goes) places the origin of Maya civilization in mythic time. in the Late Classic period of the Maya, a ruler at a site called Quirigua riffed on the long count and created new orders beyond the baktun which increased mythic time by several orders of magnitude, projecting Maya civilization several hundred million years deeper into the past and future… so even the long count wasn’t a static concept.

there’s confusion because the earliest monument with a long count date comes from the Olmec heartland, but dates to around 30 bce, well after the Olmec civilization had dissipated.

I know. He was just kidding about that, and so was I.

There is no hard evidence that the Olmec used a calendrical system comparable to the Maya’s.

So is the assertion that the calendars predate the Maya by 1000 years based solely on unwinding their calendar backward? Or on the creation myth? Or both?

1) There is no hard evidence that the Olmec used a calendrical system comparable to the Maya’s.

2) We don’t have any way to pinpoint historical start dates for the use of the long count, the tzolk’in or the haab. Evidence of calendar use is dependent on extant stone monuments that were not destroyed by natural or cultural forces in the several thousand years that have elapsed since their creation, which means such evidence is an accident of preservation and does not suggest a causal order. This means that there is no evidence that there was “backtracking” of any kind.

3) The assumption that the 260 day calendar was based on the celestial phenomenon described above is compelling, but not verifiable. As you point out, there are many theories for this calendar, such as the fact that 260 days corresponds roughly to the 9-month human gestation period and this ritual calendar was thus meant to correlate human with agricultural fertility.

4) There is nothing in the archaeological record that suggests the end of the 13th baktun cycle (13.0.0.0.0) will see the end of the world. This is a New Age myth.

one last note… our Gregorian calendar also has incongruous interlocking elements. why do we have 7-day weeks that do not divide evenly into a 365 (sometimes 366) day annual calendar?

just a skeptical archaeologist’s food for thought. i still find theories like this fascinating.

Just in case you were wondering, {{Maya date}} is a reference to the Template:Maya_date template. If you view the source of that page, you can see exactly what’s going on behind the scenes to calculate it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Maya_date&action=edit