Monthly Archives: December 2011

Brian: It’s Christmas morning and we’re still here! So, back to the various calendars to recompute when the next combination of Mayan and Christian calendars give us a chance to start over! We’ll be waiting!

Dear All: We received a Christmas letter from our dear old friend Brian O’Neil. Michael first met Brian back in 1979 at the Lay Site, a multi-component archaeological site in northwest Colorado. They’ve been great friends ever since and share a long and involved correspondence covering a vast array of topics. Brian could be a stereotype for the grizzled “have trowel will travel” dirt archaeologist. The kind of guy you hire first because he knows his stuff, can dig a level floor without a line level, and doesn’t baffle the listener with superfluous bullshit. As we head into 2012 it’s popular to parrot the media hype based on the pseudo-expert kooks dredged up by the History Channel, Discovery Channel, and the other mass-mind-melting gurus on the internet. The current biggie is that the Mayan calendars, the chatun and katun will finally align, and this, the Fifth World, will end on December 21, 2012. Hollywood–always a haven of intelligence and balance–picked up the ball and ran with it, creating a disaster film that defied planetary physics–let alone any kind of horse sense. 2012? This is the year the world ends! How exciting. Of course the smart guys in Hollywood never really bothered to learn anything about what the Maya really believed, which was that the cycles would simply start over with the beginning of the Sixth World. After all, humans–and the earth–have been through this five times already, and nothing apocalyptic happened on the previous transitions between worlds. There’s the reason no one invites archaeologists to parties. We dig up dirt about peoples’ past. And Brian O’Neil is a consummate digger. He also teaches a Southwest Archaeology class at Mesa College in Grand Junction, Colorado. Which means his students get a real education in archaeology–not the pablum spouted by bored academic PhDs in other institutions. Brian, to his amusement, has been watching the brain- anesthetizing programming about the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world on December 21, 2012. So he’s doing a special Christmas “Blue Light Special” as he puts it, for his archaeology class. He’s a digger, remember? An old-time, real, scholar. He started doing real reasearch on the Mayan calendars, and immediately ran into problems. You see, we’re talking about thousands of years. And, there’s the problem of which calendar are you using, and, well, shucks, people have actually changed calendars over the years. So we thought we’d share a quote from Brian’s latest letter to us: “…The 7 different calendars employed by the Maya do not always line up with the exactitude presented by the History Channel. (Duh!) Nor does modern astrology (synodic) match up with current (sidereal) astronomy, and the dating correlations depend on whether you use the Jullian or Gregorian calendars, and their correlations with the signs of the zodiac. [Astrologer Roberta S. Skowler uses the Julian calendar as a better synodic correlate with the Classic and Post Classic Maya, as it was in use in Western Civilization between 45 BC and AD 1582 when the Gregorian calendar came into use.]” Brian, of course ran his own numbers, not trusting what the “archaeologists” on the History Channel claimed. Which makes us wonder. Why is it that none of us in the archaeological community have never heard of these archaeologists? A quick check of the Society for American Archaeology shows that none of these “experts” have presented a single paper in the last decade! Reminds us of the line in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones asked, “Which top men?” We digress. What did Brian find? Well, depending on which combinations of Mayan and Western calendars you use, you get different dates! Imagine that! But one combination really rang Brian’s bells. What was it? “Ok, so here it is…wait for it…wait for it…according to the Waters/Skowler calculations, the end of the Fifth World will occur on Dec. 24, 2011. Well, doesn’t that just ***** up your Christmas party? “Sorry Virginia, Santa Claus will not make his appointed rounds on Christmas Eve. The Hollywood Amrageddonists and Disasterites have predicted that the super volcano in Yellowstone NP will erupt, monstrous earthquakes will cause California to slide into the sea, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello will no longer play Beach Blanket Bingo, Lindsey Lohan won’t have fun, fun, fun, til her daddy takes the T-bird away, immense tidal waves will cover the earth making Surfin’ USA a global phenomenon (in 3D), the world’s magnetic poles will flip and the EMP will fry the GPS on Santa’s sleigh causing it to plunge to earth in a fiery ball of burning wrapping paper… “But wait! What’s that I hear on the roof where there arose such a clatter? Tis Santa crying, ‘Ho! Ho! Ho! Step on it, Rudolph! Tis time to get out of here before I have to trade you for a fricking red-nosed penguin with happy feet!’ And I heard him say as he flew out of sight, ‘Merry Christmas to all, and the Maya were right!'”  

In concert with our agent, we’ve had preliminary discussions with a production company about adapting one of the PEOPLE books to either a motion picture or television pilot. No one should get terribly excited about this. It’s far from a done deal. We’ve been down this road several times before, and a great many hurdles remain to be jumped. Nevertheless, just like Las Vegas, there’s always now a chance that you might see one of your favorite Gear stories on the screen. For the moment, a nondisclosure agreement is in effect so we can’t discuss any of the details about which book is under consideration, or who the production company is. Stay tuned to the Gear fan club for details as they are revealed. You can link from the website home page. We’re positive, at least, that the producer we talked with understands and is sympathetic to the fact that prehistory doesn’t mean what Hollywood has always protrayed it as. He’s looking at the project in a very human and complicated way. He is also intrigued by the notion that no one has ever filmed a precontact story set in America before, so the film would be breaking new ground. Even Mel Gibson’s APOCALYPTO, set among the Maya, ended with Spanish coming ashore. The pipe dream in all of this is that if the project comes to fruition, and if it is successful, film makers will have a whole new universe of cultures and environments to draw from. The film also has the potential to overturn stereotypes of “prehistoric” North America. In the meantime, we’re delighted with the prospect. Having a producer contact you about one of your books is always flattering. We’re looking forward to exploring the potentials of the project. It is, afterall, exciting times.

Dear All: Thanks for all of your concerned comments about our bull search at the Western Bison Association show and sale in Ogden. As soon as we started prowling the pens, we almost swooned at sight of this one huge three-year-old bull. The New Mexico trich-tag in his ear gave him away as one of John Painter’s animals. Painter runs Montoso Bison between Taos, and Tres Piedras, New Mexico. And drought has been kicking his butt. But then, as slowly as Painter moves, a two-toed green sloth could kick his… Well, never mind. We promptly asked Painter about the bull. Would he be in the sale? “No,” John said, “Tiberius is ‘show only.’ I’m not selling him. Period. He’s out of the Snyder’s bull, Gray, and one of your Red Canyon cows. I’ve been waiting for years to produce a bull of Tiberius’s quality.” So we looked around at the other animals, most of them from Rex and Rhonda Snyder. For you non-buffalo sorts, the Snyders went out and bought the best bison in North America, collecting champions from all over the US and Canada. They have some of the finest bloodlines in the country, and stack of national and regional trophies to prove it. A couple of years back they brought the finest 3 year-old bull we’d ever seen to the Western Bison Association sale. And we’d have been real happy with one from this year’s consignment. To make a long story short, Painter walked up to us before the sale, a scowl on his normally scowlly face. “Listen. I’ve got a proposition. You know about this drought. I’ve got hay to last only until February. Here at the show, I’ve got Tiberius and Lady Bug, the Grand Champion yearling heifer, both ‘show only’ and not for sale. But I don’t have feed at home. How about I lease you the bull to use for a year? But I want you to take the yearling heifer and feed herr, too, because I want Tiberius to breed her in spring.” Michael immediately started counting on his fingers and mumbling under his breath when John told him the price. Michael couldn’t help it, and asked, “So, like…what’s the catch?” “No catch,” Painter said. “And if we don’t get moisture, I may be knocking on your door to relocated the rest of the Montoso herd!” So it was, good readers, Tiberius and Lady Bug rode home in the Red Canyon Ranch trailer, across icy and slithery roads, to temporarily join us. Lady Bug is a gorgeous yearling, and currently in a pen with Pia and her calf, acclimating to the ranch. Tiberius gets the run of the corrals so he can snort at Sunchaser, our 17 year-old bull, and promise mayhem when he finally get released. Introducing bulls this way cuts down substantially on how “Western” things get when they finally duke it out. What might have been bloody and too the death between total strangers will most likely only be a tussel to establish dominance. So, now, when you ask if we got bull, we most surely do! And we’re still trying to figure out what the catch is?