Mayans to Rest of the World: What 2012?

[Martinus]

By Mark Stevenson

updated 10:34 p.m. ET Oct. 10, 2009
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 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 "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 Maya 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 Indians 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 that mixes predictions from Nostradamus and the Maya and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?"

Grains of truth
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 truth.

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 Maya sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.

And anyway, the Maya 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."

Talent for astronomy
The Maya civilization, which reached its height from the year 300 to 900, had a talent for astronomy.

Its Long Count calendar begins in 3114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Maya, 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."

What about the galactic alignment?
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.

Time of transformation?
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."

What about a pole shift?
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."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33261483/ns/technology_and_science-science/page/2/

[Faeelin]

They misinterpreted their religion to think that Hernan Cortes was a swell god who'd bring them peace and prosperity. I see no reason to trust their judgment.

[Viking]

They misinterpreted their religion to think that Hernan Cortes was a swell god who'd bring them peace and prosperity. I see no reason to trust their judgment.

Hernán Cortez (PBUH) did bring peace and prosperity (and smallpox) to anybody who wasn't a Aztec. Being ritualliy invaded and having your young men sacrificed by means of disembowling to get the beating heart out can't be fun. Cortez was good for the non-aztecs. Smallpox wasn't though. 

[Darth Wagtaros]

The ads for this movie are so lame.  The World's Oldest Civilization indeed.

[Caliga]

The ads for this movie are so lame.  The World's Oldest Civilization indeed.

Dude, it's Roland Emmerich.

[The Minsky Moment]

The ads for this movie are so lame.  The World's Oldest Civilization indeed.

Dude, it's Roland Emmerich.

Did Michael Bay have a previous engagement?

[Zanza]

Michael Bay works on "Transformers 3 - Now with more Robots, more gratiutous shots of Megan Fox, and a storyline even George Lucas would find inane".

[Eddie Teach]

Bernal suggests that apocalypse is "a very Western, Christian" concept

http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00875/text/IndiaA.htm
http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00875/text/ZoroA.htm
http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00875/text/NorseA.htm
http://www.submission.org/end.html

I suggest Mr. Bernal read a couple books that aren't about meso-American archeology.

[Caliga]

Did Michael Bay have a previous engagement?

Obsessing over the Mayan calendar is gay, so they called Roland in instead.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

Wow, people panicking over nothing. crazy. :p

If we can count on humanity for one constant thing it's that many of us panic over the thousands years old/hundreds years old scribblings of people who were likely high while writing their scribblings . The Bible, Mayan Codexes, Nostradamus etc, et al. I should write some scenario of the world ending and put it in a time capsule... maybe I could cause a panic in a thousand years?

Hell people believe that death panel bullshit. I saw a bunch of y2k books at a local thrift store the other day. The Apocalypse that failed us all.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Michael Bay works on "Transformers 3 - Now with more Robots, more gratiutous shots of Megan Fox, and a storyline even George Lucas would find inane".

Don't forget more AUtobots that make the old minstrel shows look classy.

[Syt]

The ads for this movie are so lame.  The World's Oldest Civilization indeed.

I use the opportunity to post the 1970s version of the trailer again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW2qxFkcLM0

[Agelastus]

Michael Bay works on "Transformers 3 - Now with more Robots, more gratiutous shots of Megan Fox, and a storyline even George Lucas would find inane".

George Lucas invented Jar Jar Binks - NO other director of Sci-Fi films has sunk as low as that yet.

[Alexandru H.]

I just saw a documentary that linked Nostradamus with the Mayans, Masons and the year 2012... It was said that the first sign was the appearance of religious symbols on random walls ten years before the event...

[Berkut]

I just saw a documentary that linked Nostradamus with the Mayans, Masons and the year 2012... It was said that the first sign was the appearance of religious symbols on random walls ten years before the event...

O RLY?

Like this????