Apparently, the world is going to end on December 21st, 2012. Yes, you read correctly, in some way, shape or form, the Earth (or at least a large portion of humans on the planet) will cease to exist. Stop planning your careers, don’t bother buying a house, and be sure to spend the last years of your life doing something you always wanted to do but never had the time. Now you have the time, four years of time, to enjoy yourselves before… the end.
So what is all this crazy talk? We’ve all heard these doomsday predictions before, we’re still here, and the planet is still here, why is 2012 so important? Well, the Mayan calendar stops at the end of the year 2012, churning up all sorts of religious, scientific, astrological and historic reasons why this calendar foretells the end of life as we know it. The Mayan Prophecy is gaining strength and appears to be worrying people in all areas of society. Forget Nostradamus, forget the Y2K bug, forget the credit crunch, this event is predicted to be huge and many wholeheartedly believe this is going to happen for real. Planet X could even be making a comeback.
The Mayan Calendar
So what is the Mayan Calendar? The calendar was constructed by an advanced civilization called the Mayans around 250-900 AD. Evidence for the Maya empire stretches around most parts of the southern states
of Mexico and reaches down to the current geological locations of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and some of Honduras. The people living in Mayan society exhibited very advanced written skills and had an amazing ability when constructing cities and urban planning. The Mayans are probably most famous for their pyramids and other intricate and grand buildings. The people of Maya had a huge impact on Central American culture, not just within their civilization, but with other indigenous populations in the region. Significant numbers of Mayans still live today, continuing their age-old traditions.
The Mayans used
many different calendars and viewed time as a meshing of spiritual cycles. While the calendars had practical uses, such as social, agricultural, commercial and administrative tasks, there was a very heavy religious element. Each day had a patron spirit, signifying that each day had specific use. This contrasts greatly with our modern Gregorian calendar which primarily sets the administrative, socia
l and economic dates.
Most of the Mayan calendars were short. The Tzolk’in calendar lasted for 260 days and the Haab’ approximated the solar year of 365 days. The Mayans then combined both the Tzolk’in and the Haab’ to form the “Calendar Round”, a cycle lasting 52 Haab’s (around 52 years, or the approximate length of a generation). Within the Calendar Round were the trecena (13 day cycle) and the veintena (20 day cycle). Obviously, this system would only be of use when considering the 18,980 unique days over the course of 52 years. In addition to these systems, the Mayans also had the “Venus Cycle”. Being keen and highly accurate astronomers they formed a calendar based on the location of Venus in the night sky. It’s also possible they did the same with the other planets in the Solar System.
Using the Calendar Round is great if you simply wanted to remember the date of your birthday or significant religious periods, but what about recording history? There was no way to record a date older than 52 years.
The end of the Long Count = the end of the Earth?
The Mayans had a solution. Using an innovative method, they were able to expand on the 52 year Calendar Round. Up to this point, the Mayan Calendar may have sounded a little archaic – after all, it was possibly based on religious belief, the menstrual cycle, mathematical calculations using the numbers 13 and 20 as the base units and a heavy mix of astrological myth. The only principal correlation with the modern calendar is the Haab’ that recognised there were 365 days in one solar year (it’s not clear whether the Mayans accounted for leap years). The answer to a longer calendar could be found in the “Long Count”, a calendar lasting 5126 years.
I’m personally very impressed with this dating system. For starters, it is numerically predictable and it can accurately pinpoint historical dates. However, it depends on a base unit of 20 (where modern calendars use a base unit of 10).
So how does this work?
The base year for the Mayan Long Count starts at “0.0.0.0.0″. Each zero goes from 0-19 and each represent a tally of Mayan days. So, for example, the first day in the Long Count is denoted as 0.0.0.0.1. On the 19th day we’ll have 0.0.0.0.19, on the 20th day it goes up one level and we’ll have 0.0.0.1.0. This count continues until 0.0.1.0.0 (about one year), 0.1.0.0.0 (about 20 years) and 1.0.0.0.0 (about 400 years). Therefore, if I pick an arbitrary date of 2.10.12.7.1, this represents the Mayan date of approximately 1012 years, 7 months and 1 day.
This is all very interesting, but what has this got to do with the end of the world? The Mayan Prophecy is wholly based on the assumption that something bad is going to happen when the Mayan Long Count calendar runs out. Experts are divided as to when the Long Count ends, but as the Maya used the numbers of 13 and 20 at the root of their numerical systems, the last day could occur on 13.0.0.0.0. When does this happen? Well, 13.0.0.0.0 represents 5126 years and the Long Count started on 0.0.0.0.0, which corresponds to the modern date of August 11th 3114 BC. Have you seen the problem yet? The Mayan Long Count ends 5126 years later on December 21st, 2012.
Doomsday
When something ends (even something as innocent as an ancient calendar), people seem to think up the most extreme possibilities for the end of civilization as we know it. A brief scan of the internet will pull up the most popular to some very weird ways that we will, with little logical thought, be wiped off the face of the planet. Archaeologists and mythologists on the other hand believe that the Mayans predicted an age of enlightenment when 13.0.0.0.0 comes around; there isn’t actually much evidence to suggest doomsday will strike. If anything, the Mayans predict a religious miracle, not anything sinister.
Some of the most popular space-based threats to the Earth and mankind focus on Planet X wiping most life off the planet, meteorite impacts, black holes, killer solar flares, Gamma Ray Bursts from star systems, a rapid ice age and a polar (magnetic) shift. There is so much evidence against these things happening in 2012, it’s shocking just how much of a following they have generated. Each of the above “threats” needs their own devoted article as to why there is no hard evidence to support the hype.
But the fact remains, the Mayan Doomsday Prophecy is purely based on a calendar which we believe hasn’t been designed to calculate dates beyond 2012. Mayan archaeo-astronomers are even in debate as to whether the Long Count is designed to be reset to 0.0.0.0.0 after 13.0.0.0.0, or whether the calendar simply continues to 20.0.0.0.0 (approximately 8000 AD) and then reset. As Karl Kruszelnicki brilliantly writes:
from the hadith prophet
Look at the calendar for the year 2012 ... 1Ramadan year falls on 20 July 2012 Friday, 3 August 2012 be equivalent to 15 days of Ramadan also fell Friday. With the hadith of the Prophet about the chaos that will occur in the middle of the night of Friday 15 Ramadan Ramadan in this world that will surprise everyone was asleep, about one voice we hear is horrible will close the heavens, not the Resurrection, but chaotic hara will destroy mankind in the face of the earth by two thirds, who lived only one third only. (which is told in the NASA American 21-12-2012 planet X will cross the earth) are we all belong to the first ni / 3 is ....... God only knows .. .......... .... let us look at the Prophet's Hadith and statements about the Islamic Calendar 2012Nu'aim bin Hammad narrated that the Prophet's word. said:
When the voice has emerged in the month of Ramadhan, there will be chaos in the months Syawwal ...". We say: "Voice of the, ya Allah?" He said: "Sound hard in the middle of Ramadan, on Friday night, will appear develop a strong voice of sleep, a person who stands settled down, the girl out of the net, on Friday night in the occurrence of many earthquake. If you already perform prayers on Friday morning, you went to the house, you, cover doors, deafness is the hole-hole, and you Try to be yourself, deafness is ear you. If you feel that the voice of thunder, but prostrate to Allah and you were saying was: "Al-Quddus holy, holy Al-Quddus, Al-Quddus Pity us!", Because he who commits it will be safe, but whoever does not doing so will perish. "
2010 Calendar
Islamic New Year: December 18, 2009 (1431 A.H. *)
Aashura: December 27, 2009
Ramadan: August 11 - September 8, 2010
Eid ul-Fitr: September 9, 2010
Hajj: November 14 - November 17, 2010
Eid ul-Adha: November 16, 2010
2011 Calendar
Islamic New Year: December 7, 2010 (1432 A.H. *)
Aashura: December 16, 2010
Ramadan: August 1 - August 29, 2011
Eid ul-Fitr: August 30, 2011
Hajj: November 4 - November 7, 2011
Eid ul-Adha: November 6, 2011
2012 Calendar
Islamic New Year: November 26, 2011 (1433 A.H. *)
Aashura: December 5, 2011
Ramadan: July 20 - August 18, 2012
Eid ul-Fitr: August 19, 2012
Hajj: October 24 - October 27, 2012
Eid ul-Adha: October 26, 2012
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