Mayan Calendar Prophecies: The Complete Collection of 2012 Predictions and Prophecies (11 page)

If one accepts the premise that mythology is astronomy in disguise then what are the possible astronomical underpinnings of the Mayan Flood Myth, which includes the decapitation of a cosmic crocodile and resulting flood of blood? If any myth has an astronomical basis then surely it is this myth for it explicitly states that the events it relates all began in the sky.

The Mayan Flood Myth was recorded on a platform in Temple XIX at Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. The myth was recorded in Mayan glyphs in the year 734 AD and discovered by archaeologists in 1999. According to Mayan scholar David Stuart who partially deciphered these glyphs, “the record of mythical…events recorded in these texts warrants their addition to the select group of highly important religious and historical documents from Palenque.”
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The myth began with the date on which the events transpired: March 10, 3309 BC. On this date the myth relates that a deity known as God GI was enthroned in the sky under the supervision of another deity named Yax Naah Itzamnaaj. Eleven years later it recorded that a cosmic caiman or crocodile was decapitated which resulted in a catastrophic flood of blood. Since it was the decapitation event that led to the flood, it is this event that I will decode first and attempt to find an astronomical explanation.

According to Stuart, the glyphs that represent the cosmic crocodile include “two distinctive and unusual signs: a representation of a ‘hunched’ and seemingly headless human body and, below, a head of the creature [called] the ‘Starry Deer Crocodile,’ who seems a distinctive yet poorly understood aspect of the ‘Celestial Monster’ or ‘Cosmic Serpent.’”
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In their 1982 book entitled
The
Cosmic Serpent
, astronomers Bill Napier and Victor Clube argued that ancient references to cosmic serpents and dragons were, in actuality, references to comets.
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Could Palenque’s Cosmic Caiman or “Starry Deer Crocodile” represent a comet?

A comet consists of a head called a coma and a long tail. A crocodile also consists of a head and a body that merges into a long tail thus it would be easy to see why the ancient Maya would use such an animal to symbolize a comet.

According to Stuart, the crocodile heads in the aforementioned glyphs “each display the long-lashed ‘star’ eye and the long deer ear, also decorated by a ‘star,’ that readily identify it as the Starry Deer Crocodile.”
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Stuart also noted that “the Starry Deer Crocodile serves as the head variant of the day sign Lamat and also in the month patron for Yax, which in their standard forms are simply the ‘star,’ probably read
EK’
, ‘star, planet.’”
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In other words, the Cosmic Crocodile had strong associations with stars/planets. Coincidentally, a comet does not begin growing its tail until it enters the inner solar system near Jupiter. Until that point it is indistinguishable from a star or planet. Perhaps the Maya referred to comets as “crocodile stars” once they grew their tails similarly to how the Chinese referred to comets as “long tailed pheasant stars.”
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If Palenque’s Cosmic Crocodile was, in fact, a comet then what sort of astronomical phenomenon could account for the decapitation event? A clue comes from the text itself that states the crocodile was decapitated eleven years after God GI was enthroned in the sky. It is known that the sun has an eleven-year sunspot cycle; i.e., every eleven years the sun enters an active phase wherein sunspots increase on its surface and solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) increase. Could a solar flare or CME be responsible for the decapitation event?

On April 20, 2007, NASA’s STEREO-A probe was recording Comet Encke when the comet was hit by a massive coronal mass ejection from the sun. The CME ripped off the comet’s tail leaving only its coma or head.
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The CME
decapitated
the comet! This phenomenon is now referred to as a “tail disconnection event.”
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(Watch a time-lapse video of this event at
NASA.gov
.)

Interestingly, Stuart noted that the phrasing of the Palenque decapitation event was somewhat complex. It started with the word
CH’AK
meaning “to cut, chop something” followed by
U-BAAH
meaning “his/her/its self/body/head.”
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This suggests that the cosmic crocodile cut off its own body, which is precisely how the event would have appeared to an earth-based observer. A witness to the event would have simply seen the body and tail of the ‘crocodile star’ blown away leaving a disembodied head (coma) in the sky.

Is there any physical evidence that the sun was experiencing a heightened level of activity in 3300 BC? In fact, there is. Scientists have noted a Beryllium-10 spike in the Antarctic ice core that corresponds to 3300 BC
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. Such spikes are associated with an increase in cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere, which can be caused by either supernovae or increased solar activity. Thus the physical evidence supports an interpretation that the ancient Maya recorded a tail disconnection event caused by a CME.

After the decapitation event, the myth recorded a flood of blood: “copiously flowed the blood of the one who raises the stream, the one who drills the fire.”
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Researchers have noted that crocodiles were associated with catastrophic floods throughout Mesoamerica.
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The only way a comet could cause such a flood is if it or its fragments crashed into the ocean causing an impact tsunami. Evidence of four impact tsunamis dating to 3300 BC has, in fact, been discovered in the sedimentary record.
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(Details later.) Yet how would a tail disconnection event lead to impacts in four separate oceans?  The only way this could happen is if the comet fragmented into at least four large pieces. 

When Comet Encke experienced its tail disconnection event the comet did not fragment and the tail later reformed. Is there any evidence that a CME could either cause or coincide with a fragmentation event?

The answer to this question came in August 2011 when Comet Elenin was struck by a CME. The comet immediately flared up and then astronomers noted it appeared to be breaking apart:

“Shortly after the coronal mass ejection the comet flared up and you could see some beautiful details in the tail, with the tail was twisting about in the solar wind. But shortly after that Earth- bound amateurs reported a huge decrease in the intensity of the comet. We think it may presage a falling apart of the comet.”
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Scientists doubt the CME caused the breakup and believe that, instead, it was caused by the sun’s gravitational pull and the CME just happened to hit at the same time. Regardless, to an eyewitness on earth the comet’s tail being ripped off followed by a fragmentation that led to impacts and mega-tsunamis would have seemed connected regardless of the true physics behind the event. (Interestingly, another Mesoamerican crocodile known as Cipactli was always represented as the disembodied head of a crocodile missing its lower jaw. Could this missing lower jaw have been meant to represent the fragmentation of the comet nucleus?)

The fact that a CME was involved in this event likely explains the description of this flood as being “a flood of blood.” When a CME hits earth it can cause the sky to turn blood red via intense auroras. For instance, in 1859 during the strongest solar storm in recorded history known as the Carrington Event, red auroras were seen as far south as the Caribbean. The
New York Times
noted, “At that time almost the whole southern heavens were in a livid red flame, brightest still in the southeast and southwest.” The
New York Herald
reported that the sky appeared “blood red.”
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The
Sydney Morning Herald
noted, “the spectacle presented by the southern heavens at this time was very impressive, the sky being of a deep, blood-red colour.”
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Interestingly, the ancient Greeks referred to aurora as ‘red rain.’
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Coincidentally, immediately preceding the red auroras, exploding meteors were also reported in Australian eyewitness accounts:

“…a brilliant meteor was seen to shoot through the sky…and when near the horizon, burst like a rocket. Almost immediately afterwards the rays of an aurora Australis were most brilliantly visible in the N.E.”

“A very brilliant meteor was seen towards the south, which fell in a curve from about 45 deg. elevation, standing to the eastward. Almost immediately following this the glancing rays of a vivid aurora shot up the sky, at first more fully developed to the west, but afterwards stretching across the whole of the south from the hills to the sea.”
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Interestingly, these accounts give a close approximation for the events that were recorded in Mayan Flood Myth: first, meteor impact(s) followed by the sky turning blood red.

Yet this flood of blood may not have been purely a flood of red auroral light in the sky.  A phenomenon known as blood rain has consistently been associated with comets and meteors throughout the ages. For instance, astronomers believe an impact event was the cause of the severe weather event of 536-541 AD in which temperatures plummeted across the globe. Eyewitness accounts from this time period record,

“In the year of grace 541, there appeared a comet in Gaul, so vast that the whole sky seemed on fire. In the same year there dropped real blood from the clouds, and about the same time…a dreadful mortality ensued.”
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This red rain is thought to be the result of dust-laded rain although other theories exist.
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Yet the flood recorded in this Mayan myth was much more devastating and catastrophic than a simple flood of red auroral light and red rain. This flood was said to have brought one world age to an end. As suggested previously, the only way a comet could have caused a flood is if a sizeable fragment crashed into the ocean creating an impact tsunami. Coincidentally, evidence suggests earth really did experience multiple high-energy mega-tsunamis in the year 3300 BC.

Edward Bryant in his book
Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard
, found evidence in southeastern Australia of “six separate tsunami events…over the past 8,000 years, with peaks at 7500 B.C., 5000 B.C.,
3300 B.C
., 500-2000 B.C.,
A.D. 500
, and A.D. 1500.”
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He also noted in another paper that the “North Atlantic region has additional evidence for at least seven major tsunami…[that] occurred in 60 BC, 218-216 BC, 1763 BC, 1862 BC, 2153 BC,
3309 BC
, and 4000-5000 BC.”
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  He also noted that three more tsunami events happened in the northern British Isles in “
AD 500
, 3250-3150 BC, and
3300 BC
.”
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Additionally, Baille has noted that the 3200 BC event was “a prime candidate of an impact event that affected more than one ocean.”

The hypothesis that the flood recorded in the Mayan Flood Myth was caused by an impact event is further supported by an account of the same event in the
Chilam Balam of Chumayel
. This Mayan book of prophecy and history described the events surrounding the flood that ended the last age. These descriptions sound remarkably like an eyewitness account of an impact event:

Then it was that fire descended, then the rope descended, then rocks and trees descended. Then came the beating of with wood and stone.…After that the fatherless ones, the miserable ones, and those without husbands were all pierced through; they were alive though they had no hearts. Then they were buried in the sands, in the sea. There would be a sudden rush of water… Then the sky would fall, it would fall down upon the earth, when the four gods, the four Bacabs, were set up, who brought about the destruction of the world.
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Another version of this event was recorded in the
Chilam Balam of Mani
:

…the days and night that fell without order, and pain was felt throughout the land….[Ah Mesencab] turned the sky and the Peten upside down, and…there was a great cataclysm, and the ages ended with a flood….fire, stones, and clubs came down…After that the evil sons and daughters were buried, although alive [they had no hearts], and those who were on the beach were buried between the waves of the sea….an avalanche of water came and…everything came to an end. It was said that four gods, four Bacabs, were the ones who destroyed the earth.
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Any doubt as to the true nature of the Bacabs is cleared up in a passage from the
Chilam Balam of Tizimin
that noted, “The four Bacabs slide to earth on the back of a green rainbow. One by one the stars fall.”
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Clearly the Bacabs were seen as meteors. The “green rainbow” is likely a reference to the green color many meteors emit when they burn up in the atmosphere. The fact that there were four Bacabs (meteors) coincides nicely with the evidence that there were four mega-tsunamis in four separate oceans around 3300 BC.