At the heart of the doomsday calendar is the creation myth, an historical account of an ongoing battle of light and good against darkness and evil. The hero of the story, One Hunahpu, is a warrior who is able to access the Black Road (Xibalba Be). To the Mesoamerican Indians, Xibalba Be equated to the dark rift of the Milky Way galaxy. The portal to Xibalba Be was represented in both Olmec and Mayan artwork as the mouth of a great serpent.

One can imagine the primitive Olmec, looking up at the night sky, pointing to the dark rift of the galaxy as a cosmic snake.

Around [??] BC, for reasons still unknown, the Olmec chose to abandon their cities and split into two camps, diversifying over two distinct regions. Those moving farther west into central Mexico became known as the Toltecs. Those venturing east would dwell in the jungles of the Yucatan, Belize, and Guatemala, and would call themselves the Maya. It would not be until AD 900 that the two civilizations would reunite under the influence of the great teacher, Kukulcan, in his majestic city of Chichén Itza.

But I get ahead of myself.

Cambridge: 1969. It was from there that my two colleagues and I set out to unravel the mysteries of the Mayan prophecy. Unanimously, we decided our first stop should be the Olmec site of La Venta, for it was there, 20 years earlier, that the American archaeologist Matthew Stirling had unearthed his most startling discovery, an enormous Olmec fortification, consisting of a wall of 600 columns, each weighing in excess of two tons. Adjacent to this structure, the explorer had located a magnificent rock, covered with intricate Olmec carvings. After two days of intense labor, Stirling and his men were able to unearth the mammoth sculpture, which stood 14 feet high, seven feet wide, and nearly three feet thick. Although some of the carvings had been damaged from erosion, the image of one magnificent figure still remained: a large Caucasian male with a long head, high-bridged nose, and flowing white beard.

Imagine my fellow archaeologists’ shock at finding a 2,000-year-old relief clearly depicting a Caucasian, the artifact created 1500 years before the first European had even set foot in the Americas! Just as perplexing was the depiction of a bearded figure among the Olmec, for it is a genetic fact that full-blooded Amer-Indians cannot grow beards. Since all forms of artistic expression must have roots somewhere, the identity of the bearded white man remained yet another enigma to be solved.

As for myself, I immediately theorized the Caucasian to be an earlier ancestor of the great Mayan teacher, Kukulcan.