The ancient Mayan calendar system shares so much detail with the ancient Chinese calendar system that it is unlikely to evolve independently of each other. At least that was claimed recently by David H. Kelley, whose article on this issue was posthumously published in August 2016.

David H. Kelley graduated in archeology and epigraphy at Harvard and worked at the University of Calgary, Canada. He became famous in the 1980s when he made a significant contribution to deciphering the Mayan script. His article, entitled "Asian Elements of Mayan Calendar", was written thirty years ago, but only recently rediscovered and published in Pre-Columbiana. "In XNUMX, this article required a major scientific journal," said Dr. Pre-Columbian, Dr. Stephen Jett, but “the editors dismissed him as being too documented for the small format of his magazine, which is understandable in such a revolutionary article. Dave did not want to reduce the documentation and decided not to publish the article. ” Jett received permission from David H. Kelley to publish the article just before he died.

The hypothesis of David H. Kelley is highly controversial: the calendars indicate a contact between Eurasia and Mesoamerica over 1000 flights. The mainstream of archeology, however, claims that such contact occurred only a few hundred years ago.

David H. Kelley had previously held a controversial general theory of ancient transcultural contact. This theory has many other academic advocates, and Pre-Columbiana magazine specializes in her research. The similarities of calendar systems are just one of the ever increasing evidence of old contact.

David H. Kelley was not the only one who noticed the similarities of these calendar systems. However, due to his authority in the history of Maya, his analysis is the cornerstone of further study.

Another researcher in this area is David B. Kelley (a similarity of names is purely coincidental), an expert in East Asian languages ​​at Showa Women's University in Tokyo. He used a computer program to analyze the similarities of both calendar systems and his article entitled "Comparing Chinese and Meso-American Calendars" was also published in a recent issue of Pre-Columbiana.

Similarities

In both calendar systems, elements are assigned to each day (water, fire, earth, etc.) and animals. Although these assignments do not match perfectly in both calendars, they are often mutually consistent. Some differences may be due to changes over time - the original calendar system could be improved by different cultures in different ways. In this article, we discuss some similarities that David H. Kelley and David B. Kelley present as typical examples.

Animals

In the Mayan and Chinese calendar, the same days are associated with deer, dog and monkey. Even the animals assigned to the other days get along well, although not exactly, with each other.

The same day, for example, in a Mayan calendar, it is associated with a jaguar, but in a Chinese calendar with a tiger. Another is in the Mayan calendar associated with a crocodile, but in Chinese with a dragon. In essence, assignments are the same, however their specific manifestations may vary according to local fauna or tradition. Mayan calendar also lacks domesticated animals in the Old World, such as horse, sheep, cow or pig.

Another example of the similarity between the Meso-American and Chinese calendars is the common symbolism of the rabbit and the moon. "Aztec Day 6, Rabbit Day, was dominated by Mayauel, the goddess of the moon and the heady cactus pulque," wrote David H. Kelley. Images of the Rabbit on the Moon appear in Mesoamerica for the first time around the 1th century AD “Images of the Rabbit on the Moon from which the Elixir of Immortality dug out are very popular in China. It first appeared here during the reign of the Han Dynasty in the XNUMXst century AD or a little earlier. ”

David H. Kelley concluded that "the names of the animals in the Mayan calendar system ... are definitely derived from the prototype form of the expanded Eurasian list." The Chinese system also corresponds to this Eurasian list. The calendar systems were interconnected in the ancient Old World. David H. Kelley examined Greek, Indian and other calendar systems as examples of the fact that calendars of different cultures have similar roots but, over time, they have slightly different forms. It helped him to understand the similarities and differences in the Chinese and Mayan calendar, and to infer that these calendars did not develop independently of each other but come from a single source. The elements in which the Mayan calendar differs from the Chinese may correspond to other Eurasian calendar systems, which again confirms the theory of old contact.

Elements

David B. Kelley used the computer program InterCal developed by astronomer Denis Elliott of Caltech to reveal how the elements assigned to the days of the Mayan calendar correspond to the Chinese elements of fire, water, earth, metal and wood.

He did not find any matches at first, even though David H. Kelley, like David H. Kelley, discovered correlations between the animals on these days. But when he slightly modified the parameters, he found many mutual agreements. To modify the parameters, it was crucial that the date from which the Mayan calendar began to count was not exactly accurate. No one knows for sure when the Mayan calendar began, but most of the time it was set at 11. August 3114 BC

When David B. Kelley came out of this premise, he found nine correlations between the surveyed calendar systems within that sixty-day period - they matched the names of the days and days of the animals assigned. But when he moved the start date by four days (on 7 August 3114 BC), the number of correlations increased from nine to thirty within the given 60-day period, and the correlation appeared in how the individual days are assigned elements.

The accuracy of its comparison of both calendars has its limitations. Elliott warned that the earlier periods will be analyzed by his program, the more uncertain the analysis will be. Nevertheless, David B. Kelley wrote: "Despite the fact that the calendars do not exactly match, there is at least the possibility of a systematic relationship between certain mesoamerican names of days and Chinese" heavenly traces "(elements) and" earthly branches "(animals). ... If it can indeed be shown that the mesoamerican calendar system could, even on a smaller scale, be parallel to the Chinese calendar system, it would be possible to examine mesoamerican calendar calculations by comparing with the known (ie, Chinese) system. "Not to mention the implied evidence of the old contact between the Old and the New World.

Mayan Calendar: Twenty days each month

Symbolics and associations are not exact science

David H. Kelley also managed to decipher what correspondences could be between assignments that seemingly do not correspond to each other. For example, the Pipilian Mayan list from Guatemala has a turtle in the 19th place, as does the Malaysian list, but other Mayan and Aztec lists have a storm in the 19th, while the Hindu list has a bitch in the 19th. But David H. Kelley writes: “There would normally be no connection between a storm, a bitch and a turtle. However, the ruler of the 19th Aztec Day was Chantico, the goddess of fire, which other gods had turned into a bitch. … The concept of the “lightning dog” appears in Asia in areas under Buddhist influence and can also be found in Mexico. One Tibetan manuscript depicts a “lightning bitch” sitting on a turtle, beautifully linking all concepts associated with the 19th position of animal lists. A biologically unlikely dog ​​sitting on a turtle also depicts the Mayan Code of Madrid. ”

Chantico, goddess of fire

In addition to similarly assigned animals and elements, David H. Kelley and David B. Kelley recorded linguistic similarities between day names and other supporting evidence.

David B. Kelley wrote: “One of the most interesting aspects of comparing Meso-American number systems is linguistics. It can be shown that the words expressing the 20-series ranges in some Mayan dialects and the words expressing the decimal series of quantities in some Chinese dialects are mutually interchangeable. "

David H. Kelley came to the following conclusion: "In my opinion, the similarities I have examined suggest cultural contacts of some kind between the people of Eurasia and those of ancient Guatemala or nearby Mexico." He assumed that such contact could have occurred at the end of the first or early second century AD, concluding his work by claiming that his conclusions are "questionable, but are the best solutions I have found."