Hunab Ku

This makes sense to me, since the design looks central Mexican rather than anything typically Mayan. I know the Nuttall Codex. In fact, I've got a copy of it (at my office though, not at hand). You're correct in identifying it as Mixtec, with an Early Postclassic date (about a century or so after the lowland Maya "collapse").

The Nuttall Codex has got nothing whatsoever to do with the Mayas (the Mixtecs lived far to the north and west of Maya territory, between Puebla and Oaxaca). That the circular versions of the design are modern renditions doesn't surprise me at all. They could have been copied from the 1975 Dover Publications paperback edition of the Nuttall Codex.

It's odd that an Early Postclassic Mixtec design would come to be associated with the Maya name Hunab Ku. Jenkins calls it "a Mesoamerican design commonly referred to as Hunab Ku," but I don't know of any scholars who ever called it that!. It's even more puzzling how this symbol came to have calendrical associations. There is no evidence that the Mixtecs ever kept the Long Count calendar that points to 2012. They didn't even write in bar-and-dot numerals, expressing numbers as strings of beads instead.

The Nuttall Codex mostly recounts royal genealogy and documents the exploits of a Mixtec ruler named Eight Deer Jaguar-Claw, who lived from 1011 to 1050. It includes dates and counts of days, but is not an almanac or calendrical document at all.

With respect for the work represented here...

It is important to understand the deeper elements of symbolism when looking at a symbol as profound as the "Hunab Ku". It is a composite of elements including spirals, 'steps', polarity, four/eight directions, symbols of ascension, and then the combining of these elements to create something far more. All the elements are already in other symbolism of much of the Americas, and all the elements can be seen carved in stone at various sacred sites around Mexico. Whether this symbol is of Mayan or other culture's origin is partly missing the point, because it is in the unification of the elements described that an important set of teachings is encoded, and the viewer is encouraged to find out more. It is a veritable 'medicine wheel' in itself.
As Hunbatz teaches, the mantras and symbols are teachings. Ku'ku'lkan is a teaching about the duality, the number four, vibration and the serpent energy. It is much more than just a name. In the East there were the Kumara, another group of profound mantras, well known to Mayan esoteric folk...
The word 'Maya' means Ma - meaning Mother, and Ya (from the verb Yaxche) meaning seperate from. As agreed by the meeting between Hunbatz and Tibetan Lamas, 'Maya' is a teaching in itself. It teaches about the 'illusion' of separation from the Mother. Hunbatz' research revealed the Cara Maya in Greece and the Naga Maya in India, and he asserts that the Maya were teachers in many places.
In all the histories of esoteric art and symbolism, the initiates were taught about essential truths and then sent (or allowed) to visit places and structures where they would learn more. They would have to report back to the group/school/teacher on what they found. Some symbols were initiatory in themselves, and many who have meditated with stellae will testify to energies contained within stones.
And what so many conveniently forget is that thousands of sacred texts, scrolls, even stellae, were deliberately destroyed by the Spanish and thousands of traditional peoples, their priests, shamans and elders, were murdered for nothing more than 'being Mayan'. How can anyone expect much information to survive and be available for examination now after so much destruction and genocide? And De Landa and his cronies baptised and murdered hundreds at a time, to the extent that De Landa was recalled to Spain, repented and then came back to Mexico to write (badly) about the people he helped to almost wipe out. It's like Julius Ceasar writing about the Druids, Hitler writing about the Jews, British missionaries writing about 'Africa', and colonial US people writing about Native Americans!

As for the Maya and their connection to the rest of Mexican cultures, it is beyond doubt that the Olmec were inhabiting an area which extended at least from southern Guatemala up into areas of central Mexico. The sites that they constructed were even built upon by subsequent cultures. They came and went, as their given name actually signifies. The Maya inhabited the more southern area that the Olmec previously occupied, while other groups occupied other parts of what was also Olmec territory.
There is much nonsense by the archeological posse about the Olmec, including that they had no metal which is contrdicted by the fact that they created such perfect sculptures in hard stone. I have seen un-oxidised metal found in an Olmec site showing very clearly that they did have metal and could easily have made tools for carving. And as the Olmec came and went, as artists they would never have dreamt of conveniently leaving their tools behind, for future archeologists to find! And this assertion of 'no metal' in the Americas is made more nonsense by the discovery of alloy metal clamps holding stones in Tihuanako in Bolivia, which can only have been made with molten ores. The astronomical dating of Tihuanako is pre-Ice Age.

My point is that there is so much rubbish being written about and suggested by archeologists and anthropologists (mostly for the sake of 'funding'), that it is easy to miss the truth when sourcing information from such groups. An ex-paymaster general of INAH told me that there are huge warehouses the size of aircraft hangars (in Edo. de Mex.), full of millions of artifacts which may never be shown, often because they do not fit the consensus models. The recent excavations of huge pyramids (with tunnels) in Bosnia, will be part of the dismantling of some of the disinformation of the past, and will add to the excellent work of Hancock, Bauval, and others.
With only 10% of Nah Chan (Palenque) excavated, how can anyone say that they 'know' about such an extensive site. There is a very long way to go before many such sites and their cultures are properly understood.

It is well known in traditional groups in Mexico is that there were many sacred centres which were used by all the cultures.
Malinalco has an Aztec temple site, but on the hills above is a huge unexcavated city which long predates the Aztec. The word 'malinalli' describes the 'serpent energy' and is an indication of the initiatory centre and its power. Various people have told me about how lords and priests from different cultures were trained there.
Similarly there were places known to all the groups; places of initiations, specific ceremonies, big meetings, shamanistic training, priestly training. Xochicalco was a place of periodic meetings of peoples from all over the continent. It was like a 'U.N' of the Americas!
Mexico was never a group of isolated cultures, competing with each other all the time, as some people suggest.

And not all the peoples of the area always practised human sacrifice (as many of the archeo-bunch would have us all believe). It was the Aztec and the multi-cultural Toltec who got into all kinds of blood thirsty rituals. It was Moctezuma's Toltec beliefs (that maybe Cortes was the return of the prophet) which led him to betray his people by allowing the Spanish to see the Aztec defences. It was his Toltec beliefs which led him to be sacrificing 80,000 people a year to try to apease the 'Gods', and delay the coming prophesied 'Nine Hell Cycles', and it was this abuse of power which led Cortes to believe that his mission was a truly 'Holy' one. Cuahtemoc did not have the same beliefs and simply fought a 4 year guerilla war.
Many Maya say that their culture did not do human sacrifice and this is a nasty lie by the invaders. The only cited archeo-evidence for it is a few bones at Chichen Itza cenote which do not make a whole skeleton and many of which are engraved, a mural at Bonampak showing decapitation during time of war, and a few other symbolic pictures. The Yucatan Maya of the tradition say they would never have put dead bodies in their only supply of drinking water, and thousands of years of living there testify to that fact. There were incidences of blood letting for specific reasons, and people died in times of war (the USA has 'sacrificed' millions in its short history, and continues to this day!). Yet the books and guides state categorically that the Maya were throwing young virgins into cenotes and much more speculative nonsense!

What is certain is that during solstices and equinoxes, the thousands of sites across the region were full of ceremonial people, burning copal, chanting, dancing, playing music, etc and that this practice extended into the whole continent. Just imagine the intense energy of so many people celebrating simultaneously!
And what is certain is that the many cultures were united by the knowledge that the Sun is a living being(s) and that to honour this giver of life is to honour life itself. Many of the sacred sites were also solar 'collectors' (Oxkintok for example). Hunbatz Men and others in Mexico teach about drawing solar energy into the body with the use of mantras and hand positions, just as was practised in other parts of the world.

Please do not look for information about Mexican civilisations only in books and archeological papers. Truth is to be found on all levels and from all possible sources. How else can we make up for the loss of so much important text? Archeology will also become a spiritual pursuit, and will involve training in the receiving of information from elementals and 'spirits', as well as journeying in trance and out-of-body states. This will require students to be highly initiated and open to working in energy body states, as well as with altars and ceremony. There is more truth to be found outside of books, however valuable they are. It seems to me to be very important not to judge cultures by the available information, and not to draw many conclusions that are not confirmed with the people in the traditions now. They are mostly open to be consulted.

And I say this with great respect for the dedication, time, and effort that so many have applied to the studies so far. Although incomplete, the body of knowledge is commendable.

In Lak'ech