May 16, 2010
2012: The Mayan Prediction of the End of the World
Twenty twelve is anticpated to be a momentous year, the very first winter youth Olympics will be held in January, the US will have a presidential election and the United Kingdom will celebrate the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth. In case you’re awaiting 2013 don’t get your hopes up, because based on some forecasts, the entire world is due to end on December 21. If you delight in Christmas, take full advantage of this season and the following, since based on the Mayan calendar, they will be your last. Possibly.
Well before Europeans showed up in meso America the populace implemented an intricate mixture of calendars to record their dates. The Haab or solar calendar, both a timepiece and Mayan art form, was composed of 18 twenty day months plus a interval of 5 days referred to as Wayeb to bring the total to 365.
The Tzolkin on the other hand was a cycle of 260 days, thirteen multiplied by twenty. No-one has learned quite exactly why 260 days were chosen, though it appears the numbers 13 and twenty were both important to these earlier civilizations. There is a possibility that it is linked to the time in between a woman’s initial skipped period and the birth of her offspring, and made it easier to calculate when a baby would be born, however other ideas about crop planting and zodiac observations may be just as accurate. Most dates could be set by a mix of the Haab and Tzolin, the period would come along one time every fifty two years, which is about once in every lifetime.
To look at periods for a longer period than fifty-two years the Mayans applied a different structure that we now refer to as the Long Count calendar. This technique is demonstrated in both Olmec and Aztec art and wasn’t introduced by the Maya. Dates run forward from the mythologic day zero, the date of the introduction of the present world. Like all civilizations the base units were days, with 20 days in the uinal and eighteen uinals in a tun (roughly a year). A K’atun contains 20 tuns and twenty of these a b’ak’tun. Once more the number 13 is important and quite a few inscriptions in Mayan art show the date changing at the end of 13 b’ak’tuns and talked of incidents to occur on this particular date. This lead to hypotheses that the Mayans expected something significant might occur near the last day of the 13th B’ak’tun. That day is calculated to be 21st or 23 December 2012. So what might we expect?
Well according to several scholars nothing whatsoever. There are some references to something taking place about that time in inscriptions, but nothing very concrete, therefore it’s surprising the amount of fuss 2012 seems to be creating. A few say there’ll a spiritual evolution, while other people mention a momentous galactic alignment, even though this is founded on the location of the galactic equator, which can not be established, this does not appear extremely probable. Yet other people worry about planet Niburu.
Collision with planet X (or Niburu) has been predicted since 2003, but any planet close enough to be within collision with the Earth in 2012 would now be obviously visible to astronomers in the evening sky. Sadly this fictional collision is now confused in the media with the actual and predicted approach of a giant asteroid known as Eros that is expected to pass the earth in 2012. Eros is greater than the asteroid which we believe killed the dinosaurs 65 millions years ago but since it will never be closer than 70 times the distance of the moon, it is not likely to do any harm.
Looking at the Mayan calendar is a great reason to take into account how we calculate time and why, to understand the solar cycles that still dominate our existence and to admire the fine art of an civilization. As to planning for the end of the world, that still would seem slightly premature.
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