Dr. Bob Visits the “Aztec Calendar Stone”

Transcript:

[00:00:01.06] - Dr. Bob

Hello, everyone. It's Dr. Bob, and again, we are in Mexico. We're still here in Mexico City. I am at the Anthropology Museum, and behind me, you see what is often called the Aztec Sun Stone. It is an amazing piece of work. It's 12 feet in diameter. It weighs about 25 tons. It was found in the early 1500s by the Spanish, but was buried because they thought that it was an evil sign. And so it was then rediscovered in the 17th century and was put on display initially in a local building, and then it was moved here to the Anthropology Museum. It's interesting because for years, it has been referred to as the Aztec calendar Stone. It does have calendar elements to it, but rather than being a calendar that people would use to mark the days, it actually commemorates an event. It does have the Sun God in the middle. You see him right about there. And then it has around him four symbols which represent the four eras or the four Suns. They represent the four periods of creation that this Earth has gone through, periodically being destroyed and then recreated. Initially, destroyed by jaguar, and then destroyed by wind, then destroyed by fiery rain, and then finally, destroyed by flood.

[00:01:39.22] - Dr. Bob

And this, then, we live in now the fifth Sun or the fifth world. It is said that the "fifth world" will be destroyed by shaking (earthquakes). It's interesting because it represents, it gives us an opportunity to see the calendric nature of their calendar because you see 20 symbols around here, and those represent the 20 different periods of time, the 20 months. So there were days, there were 13 days in what we would refer to as a week, and then 20, what we refer to as months. Those made up 260 days, which was the religious calendar. And then you also have the sun calendar, which was 365 days. So it would be made up of 360 days, normal days, and then five days that were the period of time at the end of the 360 days that would represent the catch-up, the make-up days. They were considered holy days. It's interesting because while they call them holy days, they were considered unlucky as well. So various cultures in this area who use this calendar refer to those as periods or times when you would not make oaths or promises, you would not make wishes during that period of time. And so they were seen as a catch-up day. But it's amazing how accurate it was because it's a 365-day calendar.

[00:03:00.29] - Dr. Bob

Unlike the calendars that we see in much of the world that are based on a lunar period or lunar cycle as well, there's no lunar cycle element to this. There is the Earth calendar, which is the 365 days. They're the religious calendar, which is the 260 days. Those are in two rotating disks that then coincide every 52 years, which is the period, as we've discussed before, when it would be considered a a Holy Day or a new sun. So they talk about a new sun coming every 52 years. There's also a long count calendar, which, like the Jewish calendar, counts from the days of creation. The long count calendar counts from the days of this era beginning. And so that's the one we heard about, I'm sure, in 2012, December of 2012, when looked at the end of the Mayan or the Aztec long count calendar. And so there'll be some cataclysm. But that's looking at it from a Western point of view. We're always looking for the end of something in the beginning of something else. The way that the Mesoamerican people saw it is it was the beginning of a new cycle. So it really wasn't the end of anything.

[00:04:14.18] - Dr. Bob

It was just a continuation of this cycle that would continue and go on and on. Because we see a very unique period for a week, a 13-day week, it really helps us to understand that while we look at Quetzal and some of the others as being foreshadows of Christ, potentially Christ figures, and so that maybe these are the descendants of groups of people who at some point have a connection with Israel, whether it's as the Book of Norman says, with the people who are connected to the Nephites or not. While there were certainly some cultural connection, there's not a foundational fundamental consistency with the days of the week. Because when we look the days of the week, rather than just simply dividing up the month into days and things like that, what we're talking about is a covenant period. When we look at the creation, six days of creation, a seventh day of rest, we're actually responding to the covenant that God made with his people. And so that would be fundamental or foundational to these societies. And here, that's nonexistent. It's interesting that the places in the ancient ancient world where we see the seven-day calendar in the greatest antiquity are with people like the Acadians and the Samarians, which fits because those would have been the people who were most directly associated, the direct descendants of Noah.

[00:05:47.00] - Dr. Bob

So that seven-day calendar comes about in that area of the world. And then after the scattering of the people, one of the things that were lost was this covenant relationship of keeping time. Time. And so whether it's in China or it's in India or it's here in Mesoamerica, that was lost, but then it was retrieved. So in China, it's been over a thousand years that the seven-day calendar was reintroduced to the people there. Same in India, same throughout most of the world, that this calendar was reintroduced, and with it came the covenant nature of timekeeping. But with these people, we don't see that. And so it's similar to what we would see when these ancient buildings were destroyed, because when the Spanish came in to this area of Mesoamerica, they didn't simply destroy the temples. They then reused those materials to build churches and other buildings on the very sites. We see similar things in Greece, the stones of the ancient Parthenon and other significant Greek buildings were reused to create buildings by subsequent civilizations that did not have the technology or the culture to be able to reproduce that level of expertise themselves, which again, flies in the face of the idea of primitive man, and we're becoming more advanced.

[00:07:06.15] - Dr. Bob

What we see is these ancient advanced cultures, and those who come after them, reuse those materials without necessarily understanding what those materials and what the iconography and what those symbols meant. And so similar here, when this stone was discovered, it was assumed to be evil. And so it was buried upside down so that the people who, anybody who would discover it wouldn't see the face of this sun god here. But it most likely originally was used as a gladial stone. Now, what that is, is a stone that's used on a raised platform, and gladiators would then, so ancient warriors would then have a battle, and their blood would be spilled, and that would be offered to the God. One of the things you see about the Sun God here is this tongue is actually a sacrificial knife. So it's very clear that this was associated with that type of work. Now, it's interesting Interesting, too, because at the time that the Spanish came in, Montezuma, who was the Aztec ruler, the ruler in here in Tino Tichelen, he was 52 years old. That's the end of a cycle. So he likely saw that his days were coming to an end.

[00:08:17.11] - Dr. Bob

And the question was, did they see that as a cataclysm or as a moving on? And it seems to be more of a moving on. But this stone was offered likely as a place for these sacrifices. It wouldn't have been hanging on a wall. It would have been down on the ground and the battles would have been happening on top of it. What we see is here an opportunity to look at this ancient culture and recognize that one of the things that we can always trust is when we look to the scriptures and we see that in God in creation, he said that these signs in the heavens would be for signs for seasons, for days, and for years. But he means that very literally. And cultures throughout the Earth, after the flood, continue to look to the looked to the heavens, but in the absence of this covenant relationship, weren't sure of the meanings, and so they were open to the corruption of these ideas, which is represented here on this stone. So it's a great archeological and anthropological view of these people, but it also shows us what happens when this connection with a covenant relationship with God is lost.

[00:09:24.13] - Dr. Bob

Again, this is Dr. Bob here at the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, looking at some of these ruins from Tinoino Tichlan, the temple complex at Temple Mayor that existed prior to the Spanish coming in to Mexico City.