(Image source: National Geographic )

BY GINA COOK

ANCHOR LAUREN ZIMA

If you thought you could get out of Christmas shopping this year because the world was coming to an end on December 21st — think again. Archaeologists discovered another Mayan calendar in Guatemala showing the Earth’s time will continue beyond December.

A writer for the Boston Globe explains how a Boston University student discovered the calendar by chance while the team was excavating Mayan ruins.

“...BU undergraduate, Maxwell Chamberlain, spotted a faded painting on a patch of wall during his lunch break ... William Saturno, an assistant professor of archeology at BU who led the team, began an excavation, and discovered a magnificent, nearly life-sized portrait of a Maya king...”


A 6 by 6 foot room houses the calendar with delicately painted hieroglyphs, numbers, and notations — never seen before. Here’s a video from National Geographic :

“Inside on the walls a well preserved mural and some mysterious astronomical and calendar symbols.”


Live Science says those calendar symbols are ...


“...complex indeed, featuring stacked bars and dots representing fives and ones and recording lunar cycles in six-month chunks of time. ... The Maya recorded time in a series of cycles, … called baktuns. … In one column, the ancient scribe even worked out a cycle of time recording 17 baktuns.”


That 17 baktuns means time will extend 7,000 years into the future — contradicting the previous Mayan calendar that resulted in end of the world rumors. The Daily Beast says scientists believe...


“...the excavated room is a work space where a Mayan nerd—a calendar-keeper, astronomer, and scribe—puzzled away, covering two walls with calculations much like today’s scientists do on a whiteboard. The paintings and text date back to the year 800—a remarkable five centuries earlier than the oldest known Mayan hieroglyphic books.”


This newly discovered calendar does extend our time here on Earth quite a bit — But a scientist quoted in the Huffington Post says the idea the world would end in 2012 is a modern myth...


"It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000 ... The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over."