Nevermind the Apocalypse: Earliest Mayan Calendar Found

  • A Maya king, seated and wearing an elaborate head dress of blue feathers, adorns the north wall of the ruined house discovered at the Maya site of Xultún. An attendant, at right, leans out from behind the king’s head dress. The painting by arti

    A Maya king, seated and wearing an elaborate head dress of blue feathers, adorns …

  • Conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Maya house that dates to the ninth century. The figure of a man who may have been the town scribe appears on the wall to her left.

    Conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Maya house …

The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.

The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn't a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.

via ca.news.yahoo.com