Perhaps it is sufficient to say that the Maya were observing precession because it was there to be observed, and because they were uniquely capable of observing it with remarkable accuracy.1 —MICHAEL GROFE Official commentary on 2012 from academics has been long in coming. There was a small backlog of grudging comments from scholars, elicited by my persistent questions going back to 1991, but they mostly fell into predictably superficial runnels. Several published mentions of the 2012 date recorded on Tortuguero Monument 6 had appeared, going back to 1992, but they treated 2012 circumspectly without engaging the larger implications of that monument.2 We now know that, when the related inscriptions are considered, the implications of that monument are very great indeed. As we’ll see shortly, it records solar and lunar alignments with the dark rift in the Milky Way, in meaningful contexts suggesting a conceptual relationship between the birth of the cosmos and the symbolic birth, or dedication, of the building that housed the monument.
