Correlation between Mesoamerican and South Asian calendar systems

Question

The Mayan and Hindu calendars both divide history into eras, and the epochs (start date) of their current eras lie extremely closely together: August 11, 3114 BCE (Mayan) vs. 18 February, 3102 BCE (Hindu), a difference of only 12 years.

Are there any scientific theories that attempt to explain this as anything other than a coincidence? In particular, are either of the following thought possible:

1. Both epochs represent the date of a global event (natural disaster) witnessed by ancestors to both civilizations
2. The civilizations were in direct contact with each other (seems unlikely)
3. The founders of the Mayan civilization migrated to the Americas from Asia at a time when the Hindu calendar was already in use (seems extremely unlikely)

I want to emphasize that I am not asking about random speculations here, which are of course easy to find on the Internet, especially in connection with the Mayan calendar. But surely, the close correlation must have been noticed before and I am interested in what others have made of it.

Answer 1

There are many calendar systems, many of them still in use. It is expected that the year count in any given calendar should be less than 10000: recording of dates in a universal scale don't make a lot of sense without any written records, so the calendar scales have not been in use for more than five or six thousands of years at most; and there is an incentive to keep year counts short, if only to be able to use them in everyday administration and for engraving with minimal hassle.

If you take 30 random number in the 1 to 10000 range, then it is mathematically expected that the minimum difference between any two of them will be a decade or two (this is linked with the so-called birthday paradox: if you split the 10000-year range into 500 chunks of 20 years, and take 30 uniformly random values in the range, then chances that at least two of them will fall in the same 20-year chunk will be close to 59%).

Therefore, scientifically, this is perfectly compatible with a simple coincidence, and there is nothing more to explain. In other words, trying to find an "explanation" for that match of Epoch is, by nature, un-scientific.

Answer 2

As much as I know, the Hindu calendar gives the date 3102 BC which is the start of Kali Yuga. I have heard that the significance of its beginning is that all the 9 grahas came in one line, which has led to catastrophe. There are many evidences given by ancient aliens theorists that south Americans were in contact with Asians. So it might be true that both calendars are actually same. But afterwards their contact might have lost so Mayan calendar does not go beyond 21 Dec 2012.