Page 393 - The Tigris Expedition

Five Months for Us, Five Millennia for Mankind
resembling the Spaniards who had come from that sunken land
and instructed their savage ancestors in the rites of sun-worship
and all the arts of civilisation: writing, cotton cultivation, calendar
system, and architecture, including the building of cities and
pyramids. The amazingly accurate Maya calendar, more exact
than ours today by half a day in every 5,000 years, began with a
zero year of 4 Allan 2 Cumhu, which converted into our calendar
system becomes 12 August 3113 bc. The Maya astronomical clock
was more exact than our approximate radio-carbon dating. With a
human background of two million years, we may again wonder at
this close coincidence in time with the catastrophe that split Ice­
land and the beginning of new cultural eras on Crete, Cyprus,
Malta, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley. No satisfac­
tory explanation has ever been found as to why the Maya chose
the date of 12 August 31 13 bc for their beginning of time reckon­
ing. All other calendar systems have chosen a zero year to coincide
with some event in the life of the personage who founded their
religion: those of the Buddhists, Hebrews, Christians and Mos­
lems. Maya religion was founded by Kukulcan, the sacred priest-
king who arrived from across the Atlantic, and claimed descent
from the sun.7
Could it bc, I thought, that all these sun-worshippers had been
chased away in August 3113 bc from a former unidentified habitat
by some natural catastrophe not yet known to us?
‘Look at the moon!’ It was Gherman who shouted in surprise
from the steering bridge. I closed my books and put away my notes
to crawl out and see what he found so strange. HP was there in a
bound and grabbed Norman’s astronomical almanac. The sky was
clear but the moon was fading; it ceased to bc a flat and shining disc
and became globular and pale like a lost balloon. Then it began to
disappear. It looked frightening. ‘24 March 1978, total moon eclipse
over part of Asia and the Indian Ocean,’ HP reported. This was the
classical sight that would have been interpreted by prehistoric
sky-watchers as an ill omen. We were in no way superstitious, but
we shared the sombre feelings of earlier man that night, as we sailed
along the coast of Punt at a good speed but with maximum caution
so as not to stray within the war zone.
Three days later a beautiful bird, able to raise a majestic crest of
feathers on its head, came from Africa and landed in the forestay.
This was an upupa (called in Britain the hoopoe), known to the
ancient Vikings as the ‘army-bird’ (hcerfugl) and regarded by them
as a sign of war. Carlo could confirm that the upupa in Italy was

319