2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayans insist

[Phantom]

Hey all, been awhile since I made a topic. Anyway, this post should put all those 2012 fears to rest, hopefully once and for all. Read on please:


2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayans insist - Yahoo! News


MEXICO CITY – Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."

It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.

At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.

"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."

Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.

A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.

But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes "predictions" from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?"

It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or "Planet X." But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.

One of them is Monument Six.

Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn't survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.

It's unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.

However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.

Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico's National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, "He will descend from the sky."

Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.

And anyway, Mayas in the drought-stricken Yucatan peninsula have bigger worries than 2012.

"If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn't have any idea," said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. "That the world is going to end? They wouldn't believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain."

The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy

Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.

"It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. "The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six."

Bernal suggests that apocalypse is "a very Western, Christian" concept projected onto the Maya, perhaps because Western myths are "exhausted."

If it were all mythology, perhaps it could be written off.

But some say the Maya knew another secret: the Earth's axis wobbles, slightly changing the alignment of the stars every year. Once every 25,800 years, the sun lines up with the center of our Milky Way galaxy on a winter solstice, the sun's lowest point in the horizon.

That will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, when the sun appears to rise in the same spot where the bright center of galaxy sets.

Another spooky coincidence?

"The question I would ask these guys is, so what?" says Phil Plait, an astronomer who runs the "Bad Astronomy" blog. He says the alignment doesn't fall precisely in 2012, and distant stars exert no force that could harm Earth.

"They're really super-duper trying to find anything astronomical they can to fit that date of 2012," Plait said.

But author John Major Jenkins says his two-decade study of Mayan ruins indicate the Maya were aware of the alignment and attached great importance to it.

"If we want to honor and respect how the Maya think about this, then we would say that the Maya viewed 2012, as all cycle endings, as a time of transformation and renewal," said Jenkins.

As the Internet gained popularity in the 1990s, so did word of the "fateful" date, and some began worrying about 2012 disasters the Mayas never dreamed of.

Author Lawrence Joseph says a peak in explosive storms on the surface of the sun could knock out North America's power grid for years, triggering food shortages, water scarcity — a collapse of civilization. Solar peaks occur about every 11 years, but Joseph says there's evidence the 2012 peak could be "a lulu."

While pressing governments to install protection for power grids, Joseph counsels readers not to "use 2012 as an excuse to not live in a healthy, responsible fashion. I mean, don't let the credit cards go up."

Another History Channel program titled "Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012: End of Days" says a galactic alignment or magnetic disturbances could somehow trigger a "pole shift."

"The entire mantle of the earth would shift in a matter of days, perhaps hours, changing the position of the north and south poles, causing worldwide disaster," a narrator proclaims. "Earthquakes would rock every continent, massive tsunamis would inundate coastal cities. It would be the ultimate planetary catastrophe."

The idea apparently originates with a 19th century Frenchman, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, a priest-turned-archaeologist who got it from his study of ancient Mayan and Aztec texts.

Scientists say that, at best, the poles might change location by one degree over a million years, with no sign that it would start in 2012.

While long discredited, Brasseur de Bourbourg proves one thing: Westerners have been trying for more than a century to pin doomsday scenarios on the Maya. And while fascinated by ancient lore, advocates seldom examine more recent experiences with apocalypse predictions.

"No one who's writing in now seems to remember that the last time we thought the world was going to end, it didn't," says Martin, the astronomy webmaster. "There doesn't seem to be a lot of memory that things were fine the last time around."
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My Take:
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Hey if a Mayan Elder says it won't end, then I believe him. Your throughts?

[loaf]

I never cared about 2012 ever.

The world ends when I die.

also 2012=zombies.

[Pete]

I'm just plum surprised this wasn't about gay Mayans. Props to you Phantom, you pleasantly surprised me.


Once again, I don't think it really matters who says the world will or will not end. With religion and a few coincidences, we can lead ourselves to believe pretty much anything will happen come 2012. Some Mayan god might come down and kill all of us. At the same time, Christians may come to read that as the second coming of Christ, since that will supposedly also bring destruction and new life. It's all how you look at things, but personally, 2012 is just another year in my calendar. If we all die, we die, if we don't, hey there's always 2013.

[Mr.Marzipan]

I've always found the whole "End of the world in 2012" thing to be ridiculous anywho. Unfortunately the film isn't going to help matters. We'll all be laughing come New Years Day 2013 about this.

Unless it really is the end of the world but hey, no one can say "I told you so" if it is.

[Megidolaon]

XD
True that.

[Midnight Panda]

i do not think its going. We have survived this long already. kudos to you for posting this. now maby people will stop worrying. but i doubt it. but what if just by some freak event it did end?

[Che]

Bullshit. The US government kidnapped that guy and made him tell that piece of shit story. We're all gonna effin die.

[Clint]

Bullshit. The US government kidnapped that guy and made him tell that piece of shit story. We're all gonna effin die.

This is true. In fact, the world ending in 2012 is a U.S. government conspiracy. You see, after World War II, the U.S. began building new technology that could possibly be used against the Soviet Union. One of these new inventions was a time machine, accidentally created when a radioactive spider bit a regular machine, causing it to gain super time-traveling powers.

The government went back in time and held the Mayans at gunpoint, forcing them to write that the world was going to end in 2012, their plan being all along to destroy the Soviet Union in 2012, but using an end of the world excuse so that they don't look like murdering psychopaths. But their plan has failed. The Soviet Union has already fallen, and they're pissed, so they're going to send themselves back to 1996 on December 21, 2012, destroy the entire world, and then replant themselves into the world in 2112, giving the dust from the destruction of earth time to settle, and they will start anew, as the worlds one and only superpower.

[Govinda]

I'm a Mayan. My calendar runs out in December 2012. While some may think this an oversight on the part of ethnic calendar makers, it really means that we're all going to die.

Also, Mexico has a 'national autonomous university'? I want one!

[Joe]

Dammit Phantom, stop spreading these truths around! To be honest I was kind of hoping that the 2012 hysteria grows, because I figure that on December 20th, 2012, I can use it as a reason to get wommenz to sleep with me! I figure the "I don't want to die a virgin, just in case it happens" line has Gotta work on at least one of the hundreds of chicks getting stoned during Apocalypse parties!

[Shadow Of Darkness]

I heard a theory of a woman who is saying that sehes been kidnapped my aliens for about 30 years now...bla bla bla...she said that they told her that the invasoins on earth will start in 2011 !
She also said that they inpregnent her with something and a few maonth laster that kidnapped her again and took it out of her..creepy..she may be nust but its still creepy if you think about it..

[Govinda]

I heard a theory of a woman who is saying that sehes been kidnapped my aliens for about 30 years now...bla bla bla...she said that they told her that the invasoins on earth will start in 2011 !
She also said that they inpregnent her with something and a few maonth laster that kidnapped her again and took it out of her..creepy..she may be nust but its still creepy if you think about it..

Isn't that what happened to the lady agent in the X-Files?

Jeez. Not even inventive schizo.

[Shadow Of Darkness]

Isn't that what happened to the lady agent in the X-Files?

Jeez. Not even inventive schizo.

lol yeah !

but it was a real schocker to see such things in the newspapers.
Well that might be true but I dont believe it though..that lady is just loneley I guess or halucinating..

[Josh_R]

Unfortunately the film isn't going to help matters.

I have mentioned before that this movie while cause panic among the ignorant citizens of America...Personally I think it is all a load of crap and that we will be perfectly fine