A small room in XultÃºn indicates that the Mayan calendar goes
well beyond 2012. In 2008, William Saturno, who works at the
Archaeology Department at Boston University, US, began a
systematic archaeological investigation in the Maya ruins of
XultÃºn, northeastern Guatemala. XultÃºn was first reported in
1915, and it is considered the largest unexcavated Maya city. It
was until 2010 that a mural painting was found in a structured
designated as 10K-2. “Max Chamberlain, one of my undergraduate
students found remnants of paint in a looters’ excavation during
his lunch hour while doing survey and mapping in the residential
areas of XultÃºn. It was most definitely not a temple. It is a
room in what seems a residential context,” says Saturno. The
archaeologist believes the room might have been used by scribes
or calendar priests, the official record keepers of the
community who were tightly connected to the kings. According to
David Stuart, Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing
at the University of Texas,