Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse?

[snopes]

The end is not near. At least that's according to a German expert who says his decoding of a Mayan tablet with a reference to a 2012 date denotes a transition to a new era and not a possible end of the world as others have read it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...ys-expert.html

[barbrainey]

Here is a website I found several months ago that debunks everything advocates of the 2012 end-of-the-world belief are saying.

2012 scare

The authors of this website do an excellent job of repudiating "Chicken Little."

Barb Rainey

[Not_Done_Living]

I watched an interesting movie on Hulu today regarding Dec 12, 2012 and it's true meaning -- it's called Lunopilous -- mocumentary style sci fi/time travel with a sprinkling of scientology ... i dont want to say bashing but... thrown in..

[snopes]

The countdown to the apocalypse is on.

We're one year away from Dec. 21, 2012, the date that the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar allegedly marked as the end of an era that would reset the date to zero and signal the end of humanity.

But will it?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blog...101657134.html

[Sooeygun]

Originally Posted by barbrainey

Here is a website I found several months ago that debunks everything advocates of the 2012 end-of-the-world belief are saying.

2012 scare

The authors of this website do an excellent job of repudiating "Chicken Little."

Barb Rainey

Thanks for that. When I forwarded it to my sister, she told me about a co-worker whose entire family (except him) believes in the 2012 thing, no matter what argument he uses to try and get them to see the truth. I said it would make for a really interesting Christmas dinner in 2012 (because we'll all still be here) and I was told that he already has a speech prepared. I believe it starts with 'you are all idiots'.

[A Turtle Named Mack]

Originally Posted by Sooeygun

Thanks for that. When I forwarded it to my sister, she told me about a co-worker whose entire family (except him) believes in the 2012 thing, no matter what argument he uses to try and get them to see the truth. I said it would make for a really interesting Christmas dinner in 2012 (because we'll all still be here) and I was told that he already has a speech prepared. I believe it starts with 'you are all idiots'.

That co-worker should instead use their gullibility as part of an argument that they should buy him everything awesome he has ever wanted for Christmas, since they will not be around until Christmas to use their money anymore anyway.

[Lainie]

They could buy the presents using a "no payments until 2013" plan.

[snopes]

Remember the Y2K scare? It came and went without much of a whimper because of adequate planning and analysis of the situation. Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know. It will, however, be another winter solstice.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html

[Floater]

I had to adjust a number of programmes I was responsible for. It took me the best part of twenty minutes to do it.

[damian]

Originally Posted by snopes

We're one year away from Dec. 21, 2012, the date that the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar allegedly marked as the end of an era that would reset the date to zero and signal the end of humanity.

But will it?

No. Every time someone claims the end of the world is nigh, they are invariably proved wrong. They then come up with an excuse for the EOTW not happening and recast the bones for another date.

Can we stop giving these idiots the attention?

[fitz1980]

Originally Posted by damian

Can we stop giving these idiots the attention?

Not likely; because the media loves to scare the crap out of gullible people for ratings.

[Fatman]

But now it is obvious that the world will end this year.

How could we expect to be able to ring in a new year, now that Dick Clark has died.

[snopes]

Archeologists working in Guatemala have found a small room amid Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society’s intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago.

Astronomical records were key to the Mayan calendar, which has received attention recently because of doomsday warnings that it predicts the end of the world this December. Experts say the calendar makes no such prediction. The new finding provides a bit of backup: the calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years, meaning it could extend well beyond 2012.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/ar...research-shows

[ganzfeld]

The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said Thursday.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-calendar.html

[ganzfeld]

That article has a nice picture of the Mayan vigesimal number system and I was wondering where to find a good base 20 conversion. Then I found something totally cool. You can put a decimal number into the Wolfram Alpha engine and get the Mayan number as output. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work with numbers as large as the ones in the article. (Also, I see now that it's really pestering me to upgrade to Wolfram Alfalfa Pro or click off an ad before I can use the site again. Too bad. It was a nice experience for the first three minutes.)

[snopes]

For those not schooled in New Age prophecy, there are rumors the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, when a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar supposedly comes to a close. Russia, a nation with a penchant for mystical thinking, has taken notice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/wo...elsewhere.html

[crescent]

Locally, the leader of the Fundamentalist LDS* here in SW Utah has predicted the end of the world sometime in the week before Christmas. This is not new, he frequently predicts the end of the world.

But, this time, he is serving a life sentence in prison, and despite that fact, he still seems to have control over the community (more than 10,000 people). He has banned nearly all sex, and the birthrate has correspondingly dropped - about 15 men are still allowed to procreate, the others are banned from doing so and appear to be mostly following the ban. He has shut down the only health clinic, and prohibited its staff from providing any medical care. He has ordered the families to get rid of all toys - and there was a corresponding jump in bikes, swingsets, trampolines and everything else on craigslist or just dumped on the street.

Considering how things are down there, I wonder if this time, his prediction will have a more significant (and tragic) impact this time compared to all the other times he has made such predictions.


*the offshoot polygamist Mormon group, not associated with the mainstream Mormon church. They live in a town on the Utah/Arizona border about 50 miles from where I live.

[Gayle]

“The Maya never actually predicted the end of times,” says Stuart, who recently won a UNESCO medal for his lifetime contributions to the study of ancient Maya culture and archaeological sites, including UNESCO World Heritage Sites. “In the Maya scheme of time, the approaching date was thought to be the turn of an important cycle, or as they put it, the end of 13 bak’tuns. The thing is, there are many more bak’tuns still to come.”


http://www.utexas.edu/know/2012/12/1...d-ending-myth/

[Andrew of Ware]

I haven't being keeping up to date with this thread, so apologies if some of these points have been made already.

There was an article in the Christmas Edition of the BBC History Magazine. It agrees with Stuart's view in the link that Gayle posted. Indeed, one of the books referenced was a book by Stuart (The Order of Days: The Mayan World and the Truth about 1212). The article compares it to how many regarded the year 2000 - it was the end of a cycle and 2001 was the start of the next one.

It also says that the Mayans did not have any legends about the end of the world. The idea of the year 2012 signalling the end of the world may well have come from the Roman Catholic Spaniards. There are many mediaeval European stories about the apocalypse, but few in the Americas.

The article ends by saying that while many non-Mayans are fearing the end of the world the descendants of the Mayans are preparing for a big party. Have a good one!

[Beachlife!]

I heard an interview on NPR yesterday which summed it up nicely. They could have calculated more dates, but it didn't make sense to have the calendar have an extra digit. I would be like having an odometer on a car which goes into the millions. And given that the Mayan empire died centuries ago, they were right. Their calendar calculated more dates then they ever needed.