According to all the ridiculous hype surrounding Dec. 21, 2012, the Mayans "predicted" the end of the world with one of their calendars. On this date, doomsayers assert that Earth will be ravaged by a smorgasbord of cataclysmic astronomical events — everything from a Planet X flyby to a "killer" solar flare to a geomagnetic reversal, ensuring we have a very, very bad day. As we all know by now, these theories of doom are bunkum.
And now, according to a recent study by an associate professor at UC Santa Barbara, this fundamental "end date" may also be inaccurate. It could be at least 60 days out of whack.
The Mayans Never Predicted Doomsday
Before we continue, it's worth emphasizing that this mesoamerican calendar (as used by several cultures — including the Maya — in Central and South America before European colonization) does not predict an apocalypse. It never did, despite what the movie "2012" told us.
The Mayan civilization existed from 250-900 A.D. in the current geographical location of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and some of Honduras. Archaeologists studying this fascinating culture have been able to decipher their many calendars, but their longest period calendar — the "Long Count" — is what set alarm bells off in the fertile minds of a few conspiracy theorists, doomsayers and guys looking to make a fast buck.
So, where's the problem?
The Long Count was used by the Maya to document past and future events. Their other calendars were simply too short to document any date beyond 52 years. The 52-year calendar — known as the "Calendar Round" — was used as it spans a generation, or the approximate lifetime of an individual.
Using the Calendar Round meant that events in a person's life could be chronicled over 52 years — or 52 "Haab's," spanning 18,980 unique days. But what if the Maya wanted to keep note of a historical event that occurred more than 52 years ago? Or perhaps mark a date more than 52 years into the future?
ANALYSIS: Can Science Beat the Doomsday Hype?
It's Just a Numerical Coincidence
Using remarkable ingenuity, the Maya created the "Long Count" calendar, a departure from the shorter calendars. The Long Count is a numerically predictable calendar, not based on archaic measures of time.
Now, purely as a consequence of the Long Count's numerical value, many Mayan scholars agree that the calendar will "run out" after 5,126 years (or, at least, it's first cycle does). The Mayans set this calendar to begin in the year 3114 B.C. (according to our modern Gregorian calendar). If the Long Count began in 3114 B.C. and it's calculated to continue for 5126 years, the "end date" will be — you guessed it — 2012 A.D. Further refinement sets the date to Dec. 21, the day of the winter solstice for the Northern Hemisphere.
ANALYSIS: Top 10 Reasons Why the World Won't End in 2012
Correlating Calendars
A huge issue when studying ancient calendars comes when trying to correlate their time frames with our modern (Gregorian) calendar. After all, for archaeologists to work out when a big event is documented in the Mayan calendar (such as a war, famine or religious celebration), it needs to be translated into "our" years, months and days.
As the Gregorian calendar began 2010 years ago, we have a standard time line for over two millennia of historical events. But to understand the events documented by the fallen culture, Mayan scholars needed to find significant events common in both the Gregorian and Long Count calendars so they can "correlate."
To do this, most Mayan scholars use a well-respected correlation factor called the "GMT constant." GMT stands for the initials of the last names of the archaeologists who calculated the constant: Joseph Goodman, Juan Martinez-Hernandez and J. Eric S. Thompson.
But Gerardo Aldana of UC Santa Barbara is now questioning the validity of this correlation factor due to a possible misidentification of ancient astronomical events in a new book called "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World."
The Maya were highly skilled astronomers who kept meticulous records of the night sky. They documented the phases of the moon, recorded eclipses and even tracked the movement of Venus. In fact, the Venus cycle was an important calendar for the Maya. Their records enabled them to predict future astronomical cycles with great accuracy.r
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“As we all know by now, these theories of doom are bunkum.”
Really?
Ultimately, what’s going to happen is going to happen. What won’t happen, won’t happen. It isn’t dependent on anybody’s emotionally based rants and fears of facing reality. Reality doesn’t stop being true just because somebody is afraid to face it.
This year, 7.0+ quake activity is up 199% over the hundred year average, 166% over the ten year average. Record flooding and storms are occurring worldwide. All of it has happened before, but never all at once. The U.S. economy is effectively dead; as Wall Street posts record profits, with half a trillion dollars this year alone going to “bonuses,” the rest of the country dies a slow, dismal death as unemployment jumps every month. We have a 400,000 km filament on a Sun that’s showing 4+ active sunspots at any given time. Quakes in New England, Oklahoma, southern Canada and central Arkansas have become constant over the past few months.
We’re still 2 years out. This is a heck of an indicator that the only bunkum is articles like this one.
Well let’s see ….. Y2K was a flop. All those “apocalypse” predictions were flops. We have to “collect” money to pay our bills, so what will we scare people with next? Nobody even HEARD of the Mayan calender until they needed to pull SOMETHING out of the sky to scare people with. It is CACA. They Mayans just got tired of carving. They decided “Heck, in a hundred years we will carve more”. This is just SCAM ARTISTS scaring money out of gullible people……… SLIMY scam artists.
So 2012 is the Mayan Y2K?
12/21/2012 is the date the Earth (Solar system) crosses the galactic equator. On Earth, whirlpools spin one way in the Northern hemisphere. Cross the equator and they spin the opposite way. So even on a body as ridiculously tiny as the Earth, the equator matters; crossing it matters. Multiply that by a few gazillion trillion and crossing the galactic equator also matters.
As might be expected, this crossing also coincides with solar cycles (note the word “cycles”) in which the Sun basically throws an unprecedented tantrum. Check spaceweather.com (current on 10/19/2010). A 500,000 km solar filament is exploding along with at least 4 concurrent sunspots being active and many more to come. This is as we approach the cyclic peak on 10/27 when things will get even nastier. Every 86 days it’s another peak. Each peak creates worse activity than the one before it. The climate extremes we’re seeing are due to Solar activity. Nothing more. It’s all about science. What’s happening is happening and really things have not even begun to start moving yet. We’re still 2+ years out.
Whirlpools don’t really spin in different directions on opposite sides of the equator.. that’s a myth. The Coriolis force is far too weak to matter at that scale, and gets overwhelmed by other random forces. It starts to matter at large scales like with hurricanes, though. But we’re not on the “surface” of the galaxy and nothing like the Coriolis force comes into play there. Crossing to the “other side” of the galactic equator won’t matter — but passing THROUGH the densest part of the galaxy might matter. So there’s still definitely something interesting about the crossing.
A giant UFO on October 15th 2010 (2 Days after the UFO display over new york) there was a giant ‘Butterfly’ object in the sky. Many believe it was some kind of an Inter-demensional Being, and those who got the pleasure of watching this beautiful creature/Unknown object was blessed by conciousness, for treating the life of the planet with care, and peace and harmony with the creatures on it.
turn off the tv, hug your family, youll be fine. even if you die, well, youre dead. its over. dont see what the fuss is all about.
aliens, central bankers, and conspiracy theorists notwithstanding, being alive on this earth with other humans has been a pretty remarkable ride. dying with a smile is the final exclamation point.
My whirlpools example was wrong then, but it still made the point, if only in concpet: if you’re going to declare something is b.s. you should know what it’s based on and have researched the validity of the claims at least to some degree. Most people don’t. They take whatever personal emotion springs up over the issue and look no farther; for them this becomes the absolute (and only) foundation for declaring it’s all “bunkum.” That’s no foundation at all and they’ve just become everything they’re criticizing: believing something absolutely with absolutely no facts or research to base that belief on. In truth, the vast majority of skeptics have no real facts or research about what they’re skeptical about while the people they’re hammering as “deluded” have done exhaustive research, usually of a far higher quality and with far fewere presumptions than those criticizing them who operate from nearly pure unfounded (emotionally based) assumptions. It completely reverses the roles: the skeptics are the crackpots and the scientists are the believers. My theory is, research with the same zeal you’re going to declare with. Dig, probe, ask questions, and create a scientific foundation for your skepticism. Refusing to do this (usually in the name of “there isn’t time to refute every crackpot theory that comes out) makes the skeptic the crackpot – lack of research is lack of research, regardless of what the reasons for that lack might be. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it.