The Telling Tale of Telling Time

By: Russell Derrickson

March 24, 2014

 The idea that the Gregorian Calender is the best and that calenders are considered “alternative” is yet another example of Euro-centrism. It implies that other calenders are somewhat inferior, that they are quaint remembrances of forgotten times and intriguing discussions, not tools still useful today.

As so often happens when the ideas of Europe are found to be false, as the Gregorian Calender is wholly inaccurate and incapable of the precision or depth of understanding shown by calenders like the Mayan or the Vedic Yugas of India. The Gregorian Calender is so incapable of accuracy, that every four years, we have to add an entire day, and even so off as to have this interesting situation not be the worst.

The Gregorian Calender marks the Earth as having 365 days in a year, which is not exactly accurate either, we have 365.2422 days in a year. To compensate we must add an additional day every four years and then, once every hundred years or so we have to take that leap year away because it still does not properly compensate. Every year we still find ourselves an additional 11 minutes off (Paganini). This could be perfectly understandable, if it were not for the fact that other calender have managed to avoid this problem entirely.

When compared the Vedic Yugas or the Mayan Calenders, this lack of accuracy just is not justifiable. They both are based not on a simple year system of 365 days(ish), but of a 26,000 year solar cycle marking the orbit of the Sun (Nussbaumer). This is something that is just beginning to be considered by modern scientists who have only recently begun to speculate on the motion of the Sun itself.

Much of this is based on the fact that we can see over time that our constellations move in our sky in a very specific pattern that has not been accounted for in Western Philosophies. Legend has it that Einstein himself would not believe that the universe was constantly in motion until Edwin Hubble showed him an example of a “Red Shift” proving that the light waves reflected from this planet were moving away from the observers, thereby proving that the universe was not static (Nussbaumer). While legends very rarely are based upon fact, Hubble's discoveries were a major part of Einstein's famous reversal of his once staunch belief in a static universe (Nussbaumer).

What is being marked is a representation of the movement of the Sun itself. Created by people we thought were merely hunters and gatherers, yet they understood that the Earth was not the center of the universe, our galaxy, or even our solar system in a time when most of the West believed that the Earth was flat and the idea of our Sun actually moving is only starting to be investigated in the past 20 years.

The current explanation for the changes in constellations states that the change happens due to the gravitational forces moon, pulling on the Earth and slightly shifting it's orbit around the Sun. The models and math attempting to prove this is reminiscent of per-Copernican models of the Solar system attempting to explain the motion of the planets. You can make it work, but it looks and sounds like the conjurations of a magician more than the findings of a scientist. It is an attempt to keep some form of stability on an object that is not in any way stable.

To pretend that we are the greatest thing to happen to our civilization or our planet is a very ego-centric idea that does not hold up against scrutiny. When we look at the ideas of other peoples, we consider them to be an “alternative” to the mainstream of knowledge. The facts however show that those “alternatives” may be more factual than our mainstream beliefs.

It is entirely possible that there are inaccuracies in the Yugas and the Mayan Calenders, but to compare them to a Calender that has not even truly recognize that the Sun moves at all and was created at a time when the Sun was seen to orbit the Earth.

In a time when Indonesian and Asians were circumnavigating the globe on little reed rafts, the western world was still trying to figure explain how the Sun revolved around them. Mayans and Hindus were extrapolating data to mathematically represent the rotation of the galaxies themselves, while Beta stuck two sticks in the ground to figure out we had a round planet. Even his little contribution is forgotten and children are now taught that we thought the world flat until 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

If we were to loose the idea of “alternatives” and recognize the scientific contributions made by things such as calenders that show a vastly greater understanding of the universe than we currently posses, we might actually find a way to possess some of that wonderful scientific knowledge ourselves. If only we could let our own egos get out of our own way.

Works Cited

Nussbaumer, H. "Einstein's Conversion from a Static to an Expanding Universe." Einstein's Conversion from a Static to an Expanding Universe. Physics.org, 18 Feb. 2014. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. <https://phys.org/news/2014-02-einstein-conversion-static-universe.html>.

Paganini, Rico. "Calendars with Ages." DEILEGACY Calendar Maya Veda Astro Giza Comments. EVOL Publishing, 12 Dec. 2011. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. <https://www.dei-legacy.ch/calendar-maya-veda-astro-giza/>.