Maya Scholar Debunks World-Ending Myth

Maya Scholar Debunks World-Ending Myth

  10:58:00 AM    Science Lover

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As we hurtle toward the end of 2012, the conversation about a certain date with roots in an ancient Maya calendar has reached a fever pitch.

David Stuart discusses the new inscriptions with colleagues from Tulane University and Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. Seated left to right: Marcello Canuto (Tulane), Stuart, Tomás Barrientos (UVG), Jocelyn Ponce (UVG). (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Texas at Austin)

Dec. 21, 2012, has taken over popular culture this year: It's been the subject of movies, books and news shows. The date and its supposed prophecy that the world will come to an end has been the subject of water cooler conversations and international media attention.

But the truth regarding the date, according to renowned Maya scholar and University of Texas at Austin art history professor David Stuart, is that the day is indeed meaningful -- but not in the way you might think.

"The Maya never actually predicted the end of times," says Stuart, who recently won a UNESCO medal for his lifetime contributions to the study of ancient Maya culture and archaeological sites, including UNESCO World Heritage Sites. "In the Maya scheme of time, the approaching date was thought to be the turn of an important cycle, or as they put it, the end of 13 bak'tuns. The thing is, there are many more bak'tuns still to come."

Earlier this year, Stuart was working with colleagues at the ruins of La Corona in the Guatemalan jungle, where they excavated many inscribed stones that had been part of a staircase. As the world's leading epigrapher of Maya script, Stuart was brought in to decipher the 56 glyphs carved into the stones. He discovered 200 years of political history and, to his surprise, the second known reference in Maya culture to the so-called end date of Dec. 21, 2012.

But despite the popular misconception, the date doesn't predict the end of times. Rather, it was intended to promote continuity during a time of crisis.

"The hieroglyphs emphasized seventh century history and politics, linking the reign of an ancient king to the turn of the 13th bak'tun many centuries later," Stuart explains. "The point was to associate the divine king's time on the throne to time on a cosmic scale.

"The monument commemorated a royal visit to La Corona in AD 696 by the most powerful Maya ruler of that time, a few months after his defeat by a longstanding rival in AD 695," said Stuart. "This ruler was visiting allies and allaying their fears after his defeat. It was a time of great political turmoil in the Maya region, and this king felt compelled to allude to a larger cycle of time that happens to end in 2012."

Rather than prophesy, the 2012 reference served to place this king's troubled reign and accomplishments into a larger cosmological framework. In times of crisis, the ancient Maya used their calendar to promote continuity and stability.

Assuming 21st century soothsayers are incorrect about the impending end of the world, Stuart's research will continue in 2013, starting in January with the Maya Meetings, an international conference held, alternately, in Austin and Antigua, Guatemala, each year. Stuart has served as director of the event since 2004, and this year it is a family affair. Stuart's father, George E. Stuart, will be the keynote speaker at this year's meeting, which will be in Austin.

The elder Stuart was hired as a cartographer for the National Geographic Society and remained on staff for nearly 40 years working in a variety of capacities, including as editor for archaeology of National Geographic Magazine and chairman of the Committee for Research and Exploration. He founded the Center for Maya Research in 1984.

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Tsunami Risk Higher in Los Angeles, Other Major Cities Than Thought, Haiti Study Suggests

Tsunami Risk Higher in Los Angeles, Other Major Cities Than Thought, Haiti Study Suggests

  7:13:00 PM    Science Lover

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Geologists studying the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake say the risk of destructive tsunamis is higher than expected in places such as Kingston, Istanbul, and Los Angeles.

Following the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake, sediments near 
the town of Grand Goave slid into the sea, triggering a 
tsunami. Satellite images before (top left) and after 
(bottom left) show the location of the landslide. Seafloor 
bathymetry collected with sonar (right) reveals the slide path. 
(Credit: Image courtesy of University of Texas at Austin)

Like Haiti's capital, these cities all lie near the coast and near an active geologic feature called a strike-slip fault where two tectonic plates slide past each other like two hands rubbing against each other.

Until now, geologists did not consider the tsunami risk to be very high in these places because when these faults rupture, they usually do not vertically displace the seafloor much, which is how most tsunamis are generated. This latest research suggests even a moderate earthquake on a strike-slip fault can generate tsunamis through submarine landslides, raising the overall tsunami risk in these places.

"The scary part about that is you do not need a large earthquake to trigger a large tsunami," said Matt Hornbach, research associate at The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics and lead author on a paper describing the research in the Oct. 10 online edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.

"Organizations that issue tsunami warnings usually look for large earthquakes on thrust faults," said Hornbach. "Now we see you don't necessarily need those things. A moderate earthquake on a strike-slip fault can still be cause for alarm."

Within minutes after the magnitude 7 Haiti earthquake, a series of tsunami waves, some as high as 9 feet (3 meters), crashed into parts of the shoreline. A few weeks later, a team of scientists from the U.S. and Haiti conducted geological field surveys of sites on and offshore near the quake's epicenter.

The scientists determined the tsunamis were generated primarily by weak sediment at the shore that collapsed and slid along the seafloor, displacing the overlying water. Combined with newly discovered evidence of historic tsunamis, the survey revealed a third of all tsunamis in the area are generated in this way. Geologists had previously estimated only about 3 percent of tsunamis globally are generated through submarine landslides.

"We found that tsunamis around Haiti are about 10 times more likely to be generated in this way than we would have expected," said Hornbach.

In addition to Hornbach, team members from The University of Texas at Austin include: Paul Mann, Fred Taylor, Cliff Frohlich, Sean Gulick and Marcy Davis. The team also includes researchers from Queens College, City University of New York; U.S. Geological Survey, University of Missouri; Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University; University of California, Santa Barbara; Bureau of Mines and Energy (Haiti); and Universite d'Etat de Haiti.

The researchers gathered data on faults beneath the seafloor and land, vertical movement of the land, bathymetry (underwater topography) of the seafloor and evidence of tsunami waves. They worked on foot, on a small inflatable boat and on the 165-foot research vessel Endeavor.

This research was funded by a Rapid Response grant from the National Science Foundation and The University of Texas at Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences.

With additional funding from The Society for Geophysics' Geoscientists Without Borders program, Hornbach and others are now conducting a new research project in nearby Jamaica to assess the tsunami threat there.

"The geology of Kingston, Jamaica is nearly identical to Port Au Prince, Haiti," said Hornbach. "It's primed and ready to go and they need to prepare for it. The good news is, they have a leg up because they're aware of the problem."

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Fossil puzzle reveals 505 million-year-old monster predator

Fossil puzzle reveals 505 million-year-old monster predator

  10:03:00 PM    Science Lover

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The Hurdia Victoria

The fossils of a monster predator with a circular jaw and a pair of claws on its head has been discovered in the old collections of the Smithsonian museum in Washington, a team of researchers said on Thursday.

Fragments of the creature were unearthed in 1912 in Canada’s 505 million-year-old Burgess Shale site, but scientists initially thought they were part of a crustacean-like animal.

It was not until the discovery of better specimens in the 1990’s that they realised fossils previously classified as jellyfish, sea cucumbers and other anthropods were actually pieces of an entirely new beast.

Called the Hurdia victoria, it has a segmented body covered with gills and a huge three-part carapace (or shell) that projects out from the front of its head, according to the study published in the journal Science.

“This structure is unlike anything seen in other fossil or living arthropods,” said lead author Allison Daley, who has been studying the fossils for three years as part of her doctoral thesis at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“The use of the large carapace extending from the front of its head is a mystery. In many animals, the shell is used to protect the soft-parts of the body, as you would see in a crab or lobster, but this structure in Hurdia is empty and does not cover or protect the rest of the body. We can only guess at what its function might have been,” she said.

The specimen discovered in the Smithsonian’s collection was first classified as an anthropod in the 1980’s and then as an unusual specimen of the predator Anomalocaris.

But Daley and a team of researchers from Canada, Britain and the US were able to reclassify it after studying several specimens recovered from the Burgess Shale.

Hurdia and Anomalocaris are both early offshoots of the evolutionary lineage that led to arthropods – a large modern group that contains spiders, crustaceans, insects, millipedes and centipedes.

The fossils reveal details of the origins of features that define the modern arthropods, such as their limbs and head structures.

The Hurdia specimens reveal exquisite details of its gills – some of the best preserved in the fossil record.

“Most of the body is covered in the gills, which were probably necessary to provide oxygen to such a large, actively swimming animal,” Daley said.

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