There is one more known Mayan prophecy that definitely relates to the calendar end date of December 21, 2012. This is to be found in an inscription carved on a stele monument at the site of Tortuguero. Mayan scholars have previously mentioned the existence of this stele in passing, but it is only recently that independent researcher Geoff Stray, the author of Beyond 2012, has brought its real significance to attention.

The inscription on the monument is quite badly eroded and difficult to read, but the legible part reads:

The thirteenth baktun will be finished

Four Ahau, the third of K'ank'in

[Unreadable] will occur

[It will be] the descent of the nine support gods to the [unreadable]

This frustratingly incomplete inscription is the only one known that contains any information about what the Maya of the classic era thought might happen on December 21, 2012. It clearly gives the exact date of the calendar's end point.

The nine gods may well refer to the nine lords of the night who ruled the Mayan underworld. These were creator gods who, along with the thirteen lords of the day, were responsible for making the world. It is possible that the descent of the nine refers to an event happening at the ending of one cycle of creation and the beginning of another.

The discovery of the Tortuguero monument does provide a rebuttal to the oft-repeated opinion of some Mayan scholars that the Maya did not think anything special at all was likely to occur at the end of the calendar. Stray points out that there has been a tendency amongst the academics studying the Maya to downplay the significance of 2012. This, he suggests, is because most scholars do not want to associate themselves with the large amount of unreliable information and catastrophic theories about what may happen.

Little more survives from the ancient Mayan sources about 2012 than what we have covered so far. More may be discovered or revealed, but much of what is being written with regard to the Mayan calendar is very modern speculation. In the next chapter we will examine what some of the contemporary Maya are saying about their culture and the ending of the calendar.