An ancient Maya text has emerged from the jungles of Guatemala confirming the so-called "end date" of the Maya calendar, Dec. 21, 2012.
Considered one of the most significant hieroglyphic finds in decades, the 1,300-year-old inscription contains only the second known reference to the "end date," but does not predict doomsday.
"The text talks about ancient political history rather than prophecy," Marcello A. Canuto, director of Tulane University's Middle American Research Institute, said.
Carved on a stone staircase, the inscription was found at the ruins of La Corona, in the dense rainforest of northwestern Guatemala, by an international team of archaeologists led by Canuto and colleague Tomás Barrientos of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala.
The archaeologists made the discovery as they decided to excavate in front of a building that had been heavily damaged nearly 40 years ago by looters looking for carved stones and tombs.
"We knew they found something important, but we also thought they might have missed something," Barrientos said.
Indeed, the archaeologists not only recovered 10 discarded hieroglyphic stones, but also something that the looters missed entirely -- an untouched step with a set of 12 exquisitely carved stones still in their original location.
Combined with the known looted blocks, the original staircase had a total of 264 hieroglyphs, making it one of the longest ancient Maya texts known, and the longest in Guatemala.
According to David Stuart, director of the Mesoamerica Center of the University of Texas at Austin, who deciphered the hieroglyphics, the stairway inscription recorded 200 years of La Corona's history.
Bearing 56 delicately carved hieroglyphs, the stone referring to the year 2012 commemorated a royal visit to La Corona (which the ancient Maya called Saknikte’) by the ruler Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’ from the great Maya capital of Calakmul on Jan. 29, 696 A.D.
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