The 2012 Story by John Major Jenkins Page B

simple: Ask the four questions and go right to the heart of the 2012 calendar. We’ll undertake this first, and later we’ll look at the wider implications of the 2012 cultural meme (a meme is an idea complex that takes on great meaning and spreads).
    Approaching the thing in itself, it must be said, is not necessarily easy. Not as easy as spinning out clever designer interpretations, recycled doomsday prophecies, or relabeled ascension techniques. What is really at stake, and what will be meaningful after 2012, is the accurate recovery of a lost paradigm, a forgotten cosmology. The problem is that the answers to the four questions are, on one level, not that clear cut. The precise “when and where” of the origins of the Long Count are not laid out in some hieroglyphic text. On the other hand, investigators of 2012 (“2012ologists,” as I’ve called them) should be willing to work harder than that. After we’ve made some informed deductions about the Long Count’s purpose and origins, we will be able to identify some very clear answers.

LONG COUNT ORIGINS
    Several reconstructions of the origin point of the Long Count have been offered by scholars. Despite the complex relationships between the Long Count, the 260-day tzolkin (pronounced zol-KEEN), and the 365-day haab, scholars have attempted to track the calendars backward to when all the various cycles met at a seasonal quarter, such as the summer solstice. With this methodology, Munro Edmonson proposed that the Long Count was inaugurated on the June solstice of 355 BC, when all the cycles came together. 4 Other scholars suggested other dates, and it’s hard to really know for sure which criteria defined the procedure for the ancient calendar makers. There’s no direct evidence.
    It’s certain, however, that by 36 BC the Long Count was being carved in stone, because on Stela 2 from Chiapa de Corzo in Mexico we find the date 7.16.3.2.13, corresponding to December 6, 36 BC. Five years later, the famous Stela C from Tres Zapotes was carved with the date 7.16.6.16.18 (corresponding to September 1, 32 BC). On both these monuments, the full Long Count date could be reconstructed. An incomplete Baktun 7 date is recorded on Stela 2 from Tak’alik Ab’aj, meaning it must have been carved before the commencement of Baktun 8 in 41 AD. The Baktun number is clearly 7, but the Katun could be 6, 11, or 16, meaning possibly as old as 236 BC, 137 BC, or 39 BC. If it represents the last possible date in the 16th Katun of the 7th Baktun, it would correspond to July of 19 BC. There’s a fair chance it is the oldest Long Count monument known.
    Continuing farther down the Pacific coast from Tak’alik Ab’aj, a well preserved late Cycle 7 monument at El Baúl clearly reads 7.19.15.7.12 (March 2, 37 AD). Stela 5 from Tak’alik Ab’aj contains two Long Count dates; one is clearly 126 AD and the other is either 83 AD or 103 AD. Farther to the north but within the region known as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the site of Cerro de las Mesas contains two early Cycle 8 dates. 5 La Mojarra Stela 1, inscribed in “the Isthmian script,” contains Long Count dates corresponding to 143 AD and 156 AD. 6 Linda Schele was able to date the Hauberg Stela with astronomical references in its inscription to March of 197 AD (Long Count 8.7.17.14.4). 7
    However far back the Long Count’s origins may go, something definite happened in the middle of the first century BC—it was carved in stone. As scholar Prudence Rice said, “time became materialized.” 8 The willingness to commit the calendar to stone could be considered analogous to images of the Buddha, which only began to appear hundreds of years after he lived. Before that, it was forbidden. However, we can’t even be sure that there wasn’t a previous legacy of uncarved Long Count records written on perishable bark paper. But the material evidence, assessed at face value, suggests an appearance of the tradition in the first century