Mayan tablet ‘marks new era, not end of the world’

A GERMAN expert who has decoded a Mayan tablet with a reference to a 2012 date has said it denotes a transition to a new era and not a possible end of the world as others have read it.

The interpretation of the hieroglyphs by Sven Gronemeyer of La Trobe University in Australia was presented at the archaeological site of Palenque in southern Mexico.

His comments came less than a week after Mexico’s archaeology institute acknowledged there was a second reference to the 2012 date in Mayan inscriptions, touching off another round of talk about whether it predicts the end of the world.

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Mr Gronemeyer has been studying the stone tablet found years ago at the archeological site of Tortuguero in Mexico’s Gulf coast state of Tabasco.

He said the inscription describes the return of mysterious Mayan god Bolon Yokte at the end of a 13th period of 400 years, known as Baktuns, on the equivalent of 21 December, 2012.

Mayans considered 13 a sacred number. There is nothing apocalyptic in the date, he said.

The text was carved about 1,300 years ago. The stone has cracked, which has made the end of the passage almost illegible.

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology has recently tried to dispel talk of a 2012 apocalypse, the subject of numerous postings and stories on the internet.

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