Thanks! I thought this part quite interesting:


The Tortuguero monument seems to do something comparable. The final part on the 2012 (actually 13.0.0.0.0) date is very short, just 8 glyph blocks describe the date and the events that are related to this date. The much longer preceeding text (most probably when the monument was in one piece and T-shaped) covers over 175 glyph blocks detailing important events in the life of Tortuguero kings. Thus less than 10% of the text tells us, in the present-day, about 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ajaaw 3 K'ank'in in 2012. If it was a wall panel, it would have been placed in a private setting and the contents of the text was not meant for eyes at all ... More importantly, the 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ajaaw 3 Uniiw, in 2012, date and events are recorded AT THE END of the text.
Where at Palenque the texts OPEN with events before, on, or just after 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ajaaw 8 Oohl in 3114 B.C., the text at Tortuguero CLOSES with the events on 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ajaaw 3 K'ank'in in 2012. The integration of these very important dates, calendrically but also mythologically, seems to be some kind of literary device. "From the olden times" (Palenque) to the "new times" (Tortuguero); these dates thus frame HISTORICAL events (the dates and events "in the middle") and the kings that employ these dates, and record the associated events and the names of the mythological participants, derive their legitimacy from them.
So, what does that final event, in 2012, recorded at Tortuguero actually tell us? First of all, and very importantly, this part of the text suffers from erosion and breakage. This breakage even has resulted in the fact that parts of this text are housed at different locations in the world; part in a museum in Villahermosa, Mexico (where it is on exhibit), while another part resides in the USA in a private collection (luckily, there are photos ... and no, I have not seen the fragment). But .... the final part of the text tells us that 13 calendrical periods named pik (aka. bak'tun) are completed on the date 4 Ajaaw 3 Uniiw. On this date something will happen ('u-to-ma, for utoom), somewhere ... but the name of the possible location is eroded (and epigraphers do not even agree if indeed this is the name of a location or that it spells something completely different). The text continues with what seems to be a spelling ye-ma, but which for the same calligraphic reasons (long inner lines and rotation of the sign; and considering erosion) may read ye-he (possibly a former je sign; at the end of the Classic period /j/ and /h/ merged). Both lead to viable readings, ye-ma to yemal "(is the) descent of" and ye-he to yehet/yeht perhaps meaning "together with" (research on the meaning of -eht continues, as does research on the root em-). What follows this statement is the name of a god, Balun Yokte'; in other texts his name is recorded in full as Balun Yokte' K'uh, in which k'uh means "god" (and we now can enter a debate if the "god-concept" among the first Spanish frairs, who composed the earliest dictionaries in the 16th century, is the same as the "god-concept" among the Maya, or Mesoamerica for that matter).
Epigraphic research has shown that Balun Yokte' K'uh is a god (...) who is connected to war and the transition of time periods. One text at Palenque even connects this god to an important mythological (read "not historical", although now we can enter yet another debate) event some 900,000 years in the past. The final glyph block opens with the sign ta, probably spelling the preposition ta "in, for, with," but what follows, the very last glyphic signs, nearly is eroded beyond recognition. Only a few inner lines remain, even the outher cartouches are incomplete.
The "prophecy" of 2012, that one Classic Maya text on the date 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ajaaw 3 Uniiw, is incomplete. We have just sniblets on this date and its associated events. Not even story can be recorded in 8 glyph blocks, maybe just the main words of a much longer headline that recalls the story of what will happen on that date. Just as we have only fragmentary (but still more than ...) information on that other date in Maya time reckoning, 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ajaaw 8 Oohl, in 3114 B.C.
So, what happens after? Well, it all continues. Even the Maya told us. For instance, at Palenque king K'inich Janaahb Pakal records a date into the future and well after 2012. And with excavations going on in the Maya area most probably the next discovery brings us a new text and yet another pespective on these events described above, or any other event for that matter. We are learning, and we keep learning. As 13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ajaaw 3 Uniiw, is not the end of the Maya calendar or Maya culture or the world as we know it, let this date and its fascinating circumstances not be the end of our learning, understanding, ansd appreciation.