Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse?

[snopes]

With humanity coming up fast on 2012, publishers are helping readers gear up and count down to this mysterious — some even call it apocalyptic — date that ancient Mayan societies were anticipating thousands of years ago.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science...aya-2012_N.htm

[Mickey Blue]

Whats with peoples need to assume that a true "apocolypse*" is not only coming, but is right around the corner.. None of them ever say "We've uncovered an ancient sumarian tome that suggests a firey end to all life on earth is in the stars.. According to translations, it will come sometime in 4322..".

Idiots..

*I mean "apocolypse" in the sense of a predetermined destruction, supernatural or otherwise.. I don't think its unresonable to think that humans or some outside force (meteor strike, etc) could wipe out all civilized life, possibly all life (or at least human life) someday, its possible, but it would be chance, not "predicted"..

-MB

As far as i can tell they just decided to stop their calander at that point. Nothing more sinister than the fact they had to stop it somewhere.

Originally Posted by lazerus the duck

As far as i can tell they just decided to stop their calander at that point. Nothing more sinister than the fact they had to stop it somewhere.

If I understand correctly (which would be absolutely AMAZING) the Mayan's believed in a cycle. That time repeats itself. There were also cycles with in cycles. So they may have a cycle of peace that repeats 3 times, and then a cycle of war that repeats 3 times and those 6 times are a cycle that ends. Then a cycle of peace for 12 times....so on and so forth. But these cycles wind down. The last cycle is scheduled to end, according to the Mayan calendar in December of 2012.

There is a better than average chance that I am wrong about some, if not ALL of the above information.

Read, comprehend, and recall at your own risk!!!!!

[Keeper of the Mad Bunnies]

Leaving aside all of the apocalyptic musings, there may be a significance to the date. It appears that the date (December 21, 2012) coincides with a conjunction of the Winter solstice sun and the crossing point of the galactic equator and the ecliptic. This occurs every 13,000 years (of the longer 26,000 year long 'Platonic Year').

So, it may be a mile marker, but it isn't the end of the universe. It just happened to be when the Mayans decided to 'turn over' their long count calendar back to 0.

I will not vouch for the accuracy of this information or of the sites below. I have glanced at them and it makes sense on the surface (leaving out all of the mumbo jumbo).

THE MAYAN CALENDAR END-DATE

THE HOW AND WHY OF THE MAYAN END DATE IN 2012 A.D.

James Powell

[Not_Done_Living]

The calander i got from my local Chinese Food restaurant ends on Dec 31 of THIS year!!!

Maybe they know something the Mayans don't!!!!

[Flagg]

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=3222

Previous 2012 discussion.

[ganzfeld]

This is a site discussing the 2012 myth in detail, written by astronomer Dr. Louis Strous.

http://www.astro.uu.nl/%7Estrous/AA/en/2012.html

I found that site through one of the sites promoting the 2012 nonsense, which, to its credit, was not averse to including a link to the offending reason in the response. (I didn't find the response convincing at all -- YMMV.)

Dr. Strous includes a criticism of a claim repeated in the OP article, that there is some kind of special conjunction with the center plane of the galaxy that will take place in 2012. From the OP:

On the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years.

Dr. Strous discusses this misunderstanding in detail:

The Milky Way has no clear central line either, so there is uncertainty about when the solstitial point crosses that central line. Different groups of people can each use reasonable definitions for the central line that yet deviate from one another. If we estimate (for example) that the uncertainty about the "best" central line of the Milky Way is half a degree (which is only a small fraction of the width of the Milky Way), then the corresponding uncertainty in the date at which the solstitial point crosses the central line is 0.5°/360°*26000 = about 36 years.

Originally Posted by lazerus the duck

As far as i can tell they just decided to stop their calander at that point. Nothing more sinister than the fact they had to stop it somewhere.

The museum had an Imax movie some time a go that dealt with precolombian cultures. According to what it said, the calendar reset was also the end of the "age" (since the universe was on the same timetable as the Mayans) and that would somehow reset the universe, but nobody knew what would happen in the reset. I guess it's kind of like a y2k problem on a cosmic scale.

[geminilee]

The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.
(points)

Originally Posted by geminilee

The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.
(points)

I don't know, but it sure seems wyrd sister.

[Sebbenth]

How is the world going to end? Will Jeb Bush be re-elected or something?

[jayjaybear]

It's when the Awakening begins and the magic returns. Keep an eye out for dragons!

[Silas Sparkhammer]

The comic book (graphic novel) featuring the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, entitled The Idiots Abroad, ends with a variant of this story: they discover an ancient meso-American calendar in the form of a spiral, twirling inward toward a center. They see carven images of historical events, including themselves. They look just a bit ahead, and see The End!

Whereupon, of course, the comic book ends.

Silas

[llewtrah]

Just as Mr Mayan-Calendar-Reckoner had finished his predictions for 2012, his wife called him in for lunch and reminded him to take out the trash, tidy the yard, clean the irrigation channel and sacrifice the middle-born to ensure the rising of the sun while she tidied his work room. Convinced of his idleness, she kept him so busy he never got round to predicting years beyond 2012. The world has been labouring under the misconception that it was a prophecy of doom ever since.

(Ewigeit did a great album called Radio Ixtlan based on the Mayan "prophecy" - first track is based on the Dr Who theme )

[Tarquin Farquart]

Didn't they just run out of numbers and that's why it stops when it does?

[Don Enrico]

Originally Posted by jayjaybear

It's when the Awakening begins and the magic returns. Keep an eye out for dragons!

Hey! That was my line!

Don "Orc Rigger" Enrico

[jayjaybear]

Originally Posted by Don Enrico

Hey! That was my line!

Don "Orc Rigger" Enrico

Terribly sorry to step on your feet, there. Here's the phone number of my lawyers: Dunkelzahn, Llofwyr, Nebelherr & Celedyr. See if you can work out suitable compensation...

[snopes]

Four years, nine months and three weeks may be about all the time we have left on Earth. Why? Dec. 21, 2012, marks the end of a 5,000-year cycle by the Maya Long Count calendar. To some, this spells doomsday (disaster scenarios include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions caused by solar storms, cracks forming in the earth's magnetic field and mass extinction brought on by nuclear winter).

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/radio...,7726252.story

[diddy]

Originally Posted by lazerus the duck

As far as i can tell they just decided to stop their calander at that point. Nothing more sinister than the fact they had to stop it somewhere.

I got that notion as well. There is nothing to suggest that the earth is in any real danger that will happen in 4 years. There would be signs long before. All that date indicates is pretty much when they stopped the calendar. It really doesn't imply any meaning and evein if it did, it doesn't prove that anything is going to happen.

People have been claiming for years to have knowledge on when the world ends. They have all been wrong.