Just what did the Maya prophecies actually say?
As detailed in the accompanying downloadable PDF presentation, only a few fragments of Mesoamerican prophecy survive to enlighten us, and few of these are Maya. All we have are splinters, tatters, a tiny fraction of what was once a vast and substantial literature. The ancient prophecies we have pretty much reduce to two categories: Stone inscriptions and the Books of Chilam Balam. The “Talking Crosses” of the 19th and 20th-century Caste Wars provide more recent material. (The Return of Quetzalcoatl is Aztec, not Maya, and isn’t due till 2039 at the earliest.) Everything else, the “Maya Great Cycle” of 13 Bak’tuns, the Resurrection of the Hero Twins, even the Aztec “Sixth Sun,” is pure conjecture, modern interpretation, or projection, an externalization of millennialist fantasies. Maya prophecies are most useful when we examine what they do not say. Maya monumental inscriptions often predict ceremonial events. They use the future-tense verb utom, “it will happen,” and nearly always pred
