Hi Moo,
Jason's answer to you pretty well covers what you asked about, but your posts ask good questions, and make good observations that I'd like to go into for visitors.
It's hard to say from just the cover, you know? I thought, initially, it was another bogus doomsday hoax.
Other people have said the same thing. The cover is really unfortunate, and the title even more so. If I hadn't already known who Aveni is, I probably wouldn't even have looked at this book.
[P]eople could mistake you all as saying that Anthony Aveni has found evidence of the (fake) Maya Predictions via legitimate astronomy.
They might well get that impression; if so, that would be unfortunate. Aveni is, plainly and simply, a very good writer with a friendly, accessible style. (Jason might want to comment on this.) He gives good background material on what we do and don't know about the Maya culture, and the astronomical observations they made, or might have. Which is more or less what Jason already said.
I think that instead of saying that Aveni's found evidence of fake predictions via legitimate astronomy, I'd say he demonstrates how those predictions extrapolate wildly beyond what can be reasonably inferred from what we know about the Maya, and sometimes fly in the face of it. You can see some of this in the introduction to our page on the Mayan Calendar, and in footnotes that quote him in our pages on the Solstice Alignment and the Dark Rift.
Even more importantly, Aveni gives a sympathetic explanation of what people find appealing in the Maya variant of 2012 woo. That explanation in itself is good reason for regulars here to buy the book.
I should honestly just buy the book, but my major issue is my lack of interest in both the Maya and Astronomy.
I can certainly sympathize; I live in a city whose major economic activity is Maya Woo, and I sometimes get burned out listening to tourists tell me how the ancient Maya have the answers to the modern world's problems. The ancient Maya definitely had some things figured out, but I mean, really.
I just want to know if these insane "Godlike Astronomical Knowledge" claims have any merit.
No. In fact, they're contradictory. John Major Jenkins' claims are a good example. On the one hand, he claims godlike powers for the Maya. On the other, he acknowledges that they were off by about a dozen years on the timing of the Galactic Alignment. (See this Amazon review of his book The 2012 Story, and the comments on that review.)
One thing I'll add to JuJu's comment that
The Maya couldn't even get a handle on leap year, so I really doubt they had any means of even conceptualizing the galactic center.
According to Aveni,(see intro here), the Maya didn't see the need for a leap year, so this inaccuracy in their calendar didn't bother them. As Aveni says, "They were different from us."
I first learned of Aveni through his book Skywatchers. It's great, but sometimes very heavy going. Fortunately, you can view the Google version on line, for a limited number of times:
A brief review of Skywatchers is is given here, where you can also view parts of it.
Mike Poulin (guest) 30 Aug 2010 17:28
(account deleted)
