Almost every place value level in the Long Count uses a base-20 system (toggles to zero when reaching 20). Notice, however, that the Uinal level (second from the right) contains 360 days and therefore toggles to zero when it reaches 18. Likewise, the 13-Baktun cycle can be thought of as toggling back to zero when 13 Baktuns are completed.
When exactly the zero date occurred has been the subject of the correlation debate (how the Maya calendar is correlated with our own Gregorian system). Goodman’s greatest contribution to Mesoamerican studies is that he solved this problem. Knowing the correlation, we can calculate exactly when the end of the 13-Baktun cycle occurs (13.0.0.0.0).
Goodman’s preface admits his status as an independent scholar but asserts the merit of his work for one simple reason: his “years of servitude to the glyphs.”23 With a bit of discreet sarcasm, he advises scholars and scientists to not be surprised if they “find themselves pushed rudely from their stools by irreverent outsiders,” because
For quite half a century they have had this study almost exclusively to themselves. The material by which alone it could be prosecuted was practically in their keeping, sealed to the rest of the world as though it were a hieratic mystery. And what has been the result? A deal of learned and pompous kowtowing to each other, but not a single substantial gain toward bottoming [figuring out] the inscriptions … we look hopelessly to them for a solution of the momentous enigma.24
I was amazed to read such a modern-sounding critique of academia. Through the years I encountered confirmations of Goodman’s prescient words, time and time again, as I confronted rejections and casual dismissals from scholars who were completely unwilling, or unable, to rationally investigate the 2012 topic.
In an effort to decipher the script, Goodman made some solid contributions that many years later were acknowledged by Mayanists. He identified the full-figure glyphs for the place values of the Long Count, decoded the “head variant” glyphs, and recognized the importance of the 13-Baktun cycle. In an obituary, Sylvanus Morley praised his breakthrough work and noted that his calendar tables continued to serve as a valuable reference for scholars.
Goodman apparently had learned of, but evaded crediting, Ernst Forstemann’s insights that were being published in Germany in the 1880s. Forstemann, another great independent trailblazer, working single-handedly with the Dresden Codex, had decoded the eclipse tables, a Venus almanac, how the 260-day calendar operated within the codex, the 20-base system, and the Long Count’s base date on 4 Ahau 8 Cumku.
Goodman may have discreetly drawn from Forstemann, or perhaps he had hit on the same insights independently but had no way to prove it. J. Eric S. Thompson, who idolized Forstemann, believed he found a smoking-gun indication in Goodman’s own words to the effect that he had read Forstemann. Perhaps he did. But we just don’t know whether or not Goodman had already figured out what he was reading.
In any case, as often happens when a new discipline is being pioneered, valuable insights were presented side by side with wrong convictions. For example, in his book Goodman notes many Long Count dates from Palenque that are dated in the late 12th Baktun, before the current era dawned at the close of the previous 13- Baktun cycle. He thus was convinced that Palenque must be a very ancient site. But we now know that these texts at Palenque were in fact written in the eighth century AD and they were theological and calendrical back calculations, speculations about the birth of their deities prior to the beginning of the current Creation Era. The texts at Palenque are unusual expressions and help us understand how Pakal, the great king of Palenque, cast himself into the story of the Creation Deities.
For Goodman, the numbers were inviolable and should be read at face value. Those numbers from Palenque must have been recorded before the current era began, he reasoned, many thousands of years ago. Strangely, he noted an era-base date at Quirigua, the famous Stela C Creation Monument that is dated 13.0.0.0.0 in the Long Count—the end of the previous 13-Baktun cycle—but he didn’t seem to apply the same logic to the site of Quirigua. This era base is documented by Goodman in his book as the beginning of a great cycle, a period of 13 Baktuns. He knew how many days one of these Creation cycles would consist of, because he figured out the values the Maya ascribed to the five place values in the Long Count. A great cycle of 13 Baktuns would thus consist of 1,872,000 days, or 5125.36 years.
But the big question that remained unsolved in Goodman’s 1897 book was the correlation. All of the Long Count periods in his charts were free floating—no one knew how the Long Count dates should be correlated to a time frame we, with our Gregorian calendar, could relate to. Goodman had noted that many of the dates occurred during the period of the 9th Baktun, but when was this? Before Christ? After Christ? Fifth century AD or fifteenth century BC? Archaeologists did not yet have carbon-14 dating at their disposal, so the challenge of figuring out the correlation had to begin by drawing from historical documents compiled during the Conquest.
Goodman, like other investigators of the correlation question, drew from the
Goodman determined that the important Great Cycle period must consist of 13 Baktuns, not 20, based on the 13.0.0.0.0 date recorded at Quirigua. This assertion rankled scholars such as Cyrus Thomas, who wanted to preserve an elegant symmetry in the Long Count system, which operated on a base-20 principle. It was thus believed that the Baktun level should toggle to zero after 20 Baktuns were completed, rather than 13. Goodman, surely, must be fooling himself. In the end, archaeology has proven Goodman correct, for we have no Creation Texts dated with 20 Baktuns, but many dated with 13. This illustrates how scholars sometimes invoke the appearance of logic to oust the facts of the matter and dismiss the better-informed conclusions of an outsider.
By 1905 Goodman had published an innocuous paper called “Maya Dates” in
Other proposed correlations had the backing of consensus and Goodman, although correct, did not engage the debate to advance his insight. There is no defense by Goodman on record that I know of. In the Peabody Archive of his papers, an unpublished manuscript of 1908 called “Annual, perpetual, chronological calendar analyses” may provide charts for the Long Count anchored to his correlation. We might find there the very first conscious recognition that the 13-Baktun cycle would end around the solstice of 2012. Goodman died in 1917, harboring the mistaken notion that the glyphs were exclusively computational—a kind of pure mathematics that had no relation to astronomy or history. He also died not realizing that his contribution to the correlation question would soon find a champion. Attention to Goodman’s work was revived by the Mexican anthropologist Juan Martinez Hernandez in 1926, who wrote two important papers that verified and expanded Goodman’s arguments. Then a young J. Eric S. Thompson joined the effort and in 1927 fine-tuned the correlation by a few days, resulting in what is now known as the original Goodman-Martinez-Thompson (GMT) correlation.
J. ERIC S. THOMPSON, THE GNOSTIC ANAGOGUE
The story of J. Eric S. Thompson is essential for understanding the vicissitudes of Maya
