BIOGRAPHY
James Turner was born November 8, 1970 in Niagara Falls, Ontario to Richard and Jennifer Turner and would later reside in Brampton, Ontario where he completed high school. After four years of study at the University of Toronto (University College), Jim graduated in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, specializing in Philosophy with a minor in Literary Studies. During his senior year Jim worked on The Gargoyle, the University College newspaper, co-producing a bi-weekly Supplement section covering a wide range of topics.
Two days into the new year of 1995, Jim departed from New York for a 5-month road trip to Mexico and Central America with his future wife, Jennifer, a recent UofT graduate in Archeology. Although completely ignorant of the existence of the ancient Mayan site of Palenque in southern Mexico, the pair would nevertheless arrive there before the end of their first month of travel. The site was to become the focus of Jim’s later graduate studies and a topic of ongoing research that continues to the present day.
During the 5-month trip numerous ancient sites were visited throughout the region, including Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, La Venta, Palenque, Tikal, Chichen Itza, and Uxmal. A burgeoning interest in Mesoamerican archeology developed in Jim, primarily focused on the site of Palenque. After more than 3 months spent in Paris after the Mexico trip, Jim and Jennifer separated and he returned alone to Palenque days before the end of the year. In 1996, with a backpack loaded with textbooks on the ancient Maya, Jim set to studying the Palenque ruins first-hand for the next four months.
While studying in Palenque Jim met a Chilean woman, Francisca, and a romance developed. Later that year in September Jim traveled to Chile to visit Francisca and explore South America. A month later Francisca left to live with her father in Cairo, Egypt and Jim found himself landing upon the shores of Robinson Crusoe Island the day before his 26th birthday.
On the night of November 17th, while attending a lobster cookout on the beach, Jim and three acquaintances witnessed the fiery reentry of a doomed Russian satellite originally bound for Mars. Many other islanders also witnessed the crash and the Chilean government began emergency procedures to attempt to locate and recover the plutonium batteries aboard the satellite in an effort to prevent radioactive contamination. Two weeks after the crash a cholera-like illness swept over the island, at the same time as Jim began to discover dead birds on what were by now well-known paths. After an intense bout with severe stomach cramps, Jim began to suspect that radiation poisoning was responsible for the illnesses and avian deaths.
Unprepared for such a discovery, he was without any camera equipment. He drew sketches of the monument and studied it from a distance on several occasions until near the end of the month. The expiration of his tourist visa forced him to return to Santiago and leave for Bolivia at the beginning of the New Year.
In 1997, after almost two months of travel through Bolivia and Peru, including visits to La Paz, Lake Titicaca, Cuzco and Machu Picchu, Jim was convinced by a traveling companion to return to the island to photograph the monument. This second trip to the island consisted of only two days and one night, long enough to take several rolls of film of the monument and its surroundings. The light and shadow effects were visibly different from what had been observed several months earlier, the first indication that the monument contains intentional alignments to the annual stations of the solar cycle.
A third trip to the island was undertaken at the end of 1997 with the intention of capturing the light and shadow effects of the December solstice. Jim spent more than a month on the island during this trip. One of the highlights consisted of a summit of the monument on the day of the solstice. The month was spent studying the monument, taking photos, and researching through textbooks for an interpretation of the monument.
Jim returned home to Toronto and began making plans to travel to Colombia for the total solar eclipse of February 26, 1998. The successful observation of this eclipse from the village of Turbo on the Gulf of Uraba in Colombia provided an experiential link to the eclipse imagery recorded in the Palenque inscriptions. Shortly after returning from Colombia, Jim was reunited with Jennifer and the pair spent the next year in Southampton, UK, where Jennifer completed a Master’s of Science degree in Archeological Computing. Jim took advantage of the university libraries to further his research on Robinson Crusoe Island and the monument.
Upon returning to New York, Jim enrolled at SUNY Albany in the Anthropology department where he began his graduate degree in Mesoamerican Archeology in 2000. A strong showing on the GRE afforded him a teaching assistantship that provided a tuition waiver and monthly stipend. After completion of the required coursework Jim began his thesis research under the supervision of John Justeson, a renowned Mayan scholar and linguist and decipherer of the epi-Olmec hieroglyphic writing system, the oldest in Mesoamerica and a precursor to the Mayan hieroglyphs. Jim's thesis introduced a potential Mayan zodiac derived from the Dresden Codex Venus Table and he was awarded his Master of Arts degree in 2005.
Recent years have contained a number of important astronomical events that were observed by Jim in the course of his research. A total lunar eclipse occurred on his birthday in November, 2003. He traveled to Italy in June 2004 to witness a rare transit of Venus, the first in over a century. A transit of Mercury occurred on his birthday in 2006 but, due to inclement weather, was unable to be seen. Instead, Jim spent the day arranging a work space and officially launched what would become the Apocalypse Island Project in an effort to document his travels and the discovery of the island monument, along with the insights the monument had provided in his interpretation of the inscriptions at Palenque and the Mayan calendar. This work continues to the present day.
View north of southern face of the monument depicting Sun God emerging from a snail shell. The snail shell symbolizes time and has associations with the December solstice.
Simulated view of Total Solar Eclipse during sunset on November 13, 2012. The total eclipse is not seen on continental South America.
Darkbird18 is back on 2012 and Jim Turner, Apocalypse Island because he my have found the most important clue to the Mayan 2012 Event and the Long Count Calendar. I first saw this story on the History Channel and had to research what he had found and something hit me, Jim have vision and a open mind to see the truth and to persuade it no matter what! Read his website and help him find the truth; because 2012 is very soon, the world is changing all the time now and I can see that things are not the same but what does it all mean; read on …………………………………. Update 12/25/12 The weblink to Jim Turner website is offline and his website is down. There has been so much negitive press about this island and the end of the world 2012 that poor Jim Turner has not put back up his website! The world has a very dark mind set because thier minds are not thier own and at no time did Mr. Turner say that the end of the world was coming and you can watch the end at "Apocalypse Island"! He did his research on the king who travel to this remote place and found this mounment there and so that it line up with the 2012 events that will happen on 12/21/12. Well good luck to you Mr. Turner and God Speed!
Darkbird18
Apocalypse Island - The Official Website of James Turner, Explorer
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