Posted on 04/15/2008 7:22:32 PM PDT by blam
Mayan Apocalypse, 2012
If you observe the ancient Mayan calendar, then your time's running out. Dr Karl has been rummaging through ancient Mayan scribblings that are said to indicate an apocalyptic end by 2012.
By Karl S. Kruszelnicki
Villagers and tourists celebrate next to the Kukulkan pyramid at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula(Source: Victor Ruiz/Reuters)
The driver was taking me from Melbourne airport into the city. As we chatted, it came out that he was deeply worried. He had a wife and child, and a new baby on the way - but what was the use of living, he cried, if the world would end in 2012 as predicted by the Mayan prophecies, when his new baby would be just four years old.
Prophecies about the end of the world (or at the very least, civilisation as we know it) have been around forever. There was a flurry of them around 2000 AD, and another bunch for 5 May 2005, when all the planets were supposed to line up. (By the way, they didn't line up and yep, we're still here.)
The Mayan civilisation covered the skinny bit of the Americas between North and South America, reaching from the southern states of Mexico down to western Honduras. Its Classic Period was from 250 to 900 AD, so their best years were behind them by the time of the Spanish invasion.
At their peak, the Mayans had the only mature written language ever found in the Americas, spectacular and densely populated cities, and very sophisticated systems of mathematics, astronomy and calendars.
They were marvelous astronomers, showing what could be done with the naked eye. Their measurements of the lunar month, the period of Venus and the year were more accurate than those of the Ancient Greeks.
Which brings us to the calendar that predicts the end of the world in 2012.
The Mayans had many calendars, because they saw 'time' as a meshing of sacred or spiritual cycles. So while our Gregorian calendar organises days for social, administrative and commercial purposes, the Mayan calendars added a religious element. For example, each day had a patron spirit, and so could be good for travel, but bad for business.
One of their several calendars was called the Long Count. It was set up around 355 BCE, and had as its chosen starting date 0.0.0.0.0, which corresponds to 11 August 3114 BCE. And on 21 December 2012, the Mayan Long Count calendar will read 13.0.0.0.0.
Now here's how it works. Our numbering system is based on 10. But the Mayans had a counting system based on 20, so most of the 'slots' in their calendar had 20 potential numbers (0 to 19). The calendar read a little like the odometer in your car's speedo (which run from 0 to 9). The extreme right slot (of five slots) would count through the days, and when it got to 19 days (0.0.0.0.19) would reset to zero, and the next slot across to the left would increase by one (to 0.0.0.1.0).
So 0.0.0.0.1 was one day, and 0.0.0.1.0 was 20 days. Then 0.0.1.0.0 was about one year, 0.1.0.0.0 was about 20 years and with 1.0.0.0.0, you've clocked up about 400 years. And on 21 December 2012, the Mayan Long Count calendar will read 13.0.0.0.0.
By the way, the time between 0.0.0.0.0 and 13.0.0.0.0 is about 5126 years. Now some Mayan archaeo-astronomers reckon that the calendar should reset back to zero and start again. But others disagree and say it should continue to 20, and then reset again.
We don't have enough information to know who is correct - but if it does go up to 20, then this completely destroys the End of Days Conspiracy Theory, as far as the year 2012 is concerned. But let's stick to the 13 Conspiracy for the time being.
The claims for 21 December 2012 cover a lot of ground. They range from 'nuclear holocaust' to 'Harmonic Convergence of cosmic energy flowing through the earth, cleansing it and raising it to a higher level of vibration', and along the way they include 'the death of two-thirds of humanity' and 'the north and south poles will split' - you get the picture.
But there are two problems with this.
First, when a calendar comes to the end of a cycle, it just rolls over into the next cycle. In our Western society, every year 31 December is followed, not by the End of the World, but by 1 January. So 13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan calendar will be followed by 0.0.0.0.1 - or good-ol' 22 December 2012, with only a few shopping days left to Christmas.
And the second problem is that it is always remarkably difficult to make predictions, especially about the future, and things that haven't happened yet.
GGG Ping.
Four years, huh. That’s just enough time for whichever of the loser presidential candidates to screw the world up. Yep, sounds about right.
Good!
Y2K12
All stone calendars will cease to function!
The human sacrifice schedule will be thrown into chaos!
Stock up NOW on freeze dried human hearts.
Aargh. More end of time nonsense! Where’s the ‘not this sh*t again’ pic?
the second problem is that it is always remarkably difficult to make predictions, especially about the future, and things that haven’t happened yet.
Actually that’s the easy part, being accurate, now that’s another thing.
It’s off by 4 years. Should be Nov 4th 2008.
I have been to Chichen Itza nice place and interesting culture ... My take on this is they didn’t like RINOS or Liberals and 2012 will be to late to correct the foolish road we have been traveling.
One of the televangelist ministries has latched onto 2012 and has published a book. They’re saying December 21, 2012. Not sure whether the book supports this, or is critical. I’d think critical, since date setting is severely frowned upon. I think it’s Jack Van Impe Ministries.
Interesting, actually, since 2013 will be 40 years of legalized human sacrifice in the USA. The One True God of the Bible loves the number 40.
this is a good book. it pulls together economic, social, political, regional, geographic, and environmental happenings in the post cold war era into a stark, and bleak vision of the future.
below is a review posted on amazon.com
(this really doesn't have anything to do with the mayans, but is still an interesting read).
This book collects 9 essays by Kaplan, known for political realism and bold travel writing. The first and last essays are the worst; the middle seven are not so bad.
In the first essay Kaplan argues that the present peace will not last long, that its "degeneration" in places like sub-Saharan Africa will lead to anarchy, with disturbing results even in the first world. His main evidence is environmental change and resource depletion (especially soil and water--his argument would be stronger if he included oil). I don't know what golden age Kaplan is looking back to in sub-Saharan Africa (in Eastern Europe I guess it must be the Ottomans); so anarchy there will be no surprise. But with grand assumptions and meager evidence--surely he has more than he cites, but he has to deal with apparently contrary evidence to be truly convincing--he declares breathtaking conclusions, such as the dissolution of the USA into ethnic warfare. Perhaps he's right, but his analysis is so thin that he's not persuasive.
Yet there are moments of light, as when he describes the historical perspective of the occupants of Ankara's slums, quoting Naipaul. Or when he analyzes the "lies of the mapmaker," more precisely the lies of the post-WWII statesmen who carelessly created the states defined by the lines on the map.
So many people naively believe that the 3rd world will inevitably become like the 1st; but Kaplan believes it will go the other way just as inevitably. His first essay is a polemic for his belief. I'm sorry; it has little useful analysis or insight.
Reading the second essay, "Was Democracy Just a Moment?" is like stepping from darkness into light (of course there are still shadows). If you believe that democracy is always the best government, this essay will be challenging for you.
The third essay, "Idealism Won't Stop Mass Murder," will be interesting for anyone interested in the causes and preventions of genocide and similar massive tragedies.
Let me skip around a bit, for it is no small irony that an author concerned with mass murder would write in defense of Henry Kissinger, yet that is the purpose of the seventh essay. Kaplan defends a man who is perhaps American history's worst criminal against critics by systematically understating everything Kissinger did in Vietnam, Cambodia, (Kaplan doesn't mention Laos), Cyprus, Chile, (and he doesn't mention East Timor). See Christopher Hitchens' "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," to which Kaplan's essay is a weak response.
The fourth essay explains the need for special forces and institutions such as the CIA. He believes--and I agree--that these are the future of warfare.
The fifth essay is a review of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall." If you don't know why that's famous, Kaplan's essay might even inspire you to try reading it. That happened to me.
The eighth essay is another book review, this time of Conrad's "Nostromo." Kaplan compares the book to "Heart of Darkness" and considers its application to the contemporary third world. (A few years ago an edition of "Nostromo" and "Lord Jim" was published with introductions by Kaplan.) Another book was added to my reading list.
The sixth essay advocates "proportional" responses to foreign policy. Few would argue with the vague philosophy Kaplan presents, except those who eagerly throw American troops into murky conflicts with unclear goals (Kissinger?). Of course, practical applications and interpretations are the real problem. Anyway, this essay is solid and concise.
With the ninth essay Kaplan descends again. Nostalgic for the Cold War and MAD--"the Cold War may have been as close to utopia as we are ever likely to get" p. 171--he wants to be sure that the US rather than the UN is the power of the future. He is sure that the UN wouldn't have enough war, so it would be unprincipled. I'm not making this up! "The US should... take over the UN in order to make it a transparent multiplier of American and Western power. That, of course, may not lead to peace, since others might resent it and fight as a result; but such action would fill the [UN]'s insipid ideological vacuum with at least someone's values--indeed ours. Peace should never be an expediency."
Whoa.
Of course he's right that peace won't last forever; he's right that we (whoever we are) should be prepared to protect ourselves from evil; he's right not to trust the UN unconditionally (don't trust anything unconditionally). But he's wrong to believe that America is not capable of evil. In this respect he's as naive as any idealist: "Of course, [America's] post-Cold War mission to spread democracy is partly a pose." (71).
Partly? PARTLY?
This was my first book by Kaplan. I'm going to read another. Perhaps he has written some more well-reasoned arguments elsewhere.
Kaplan is relevant because he understands human ambition; he is wrong because he doesn't believe it can be channeled productively and peacefully. No one should ignore such a voice, but no one should read uncritically.
There's no such date. "BCE" isn't a legally recognized dating format.
There's "BC" and there's "AD," but "BCE" and "CE" are figments of imaginative college profs and other politically correct nincompoops.
Earliest-found use of “vulgaris aerae” (Latin for Common Era) (1615). Johannes Kepler (1615). Joannis Keppleri Eclogae chronicae : ex epistolis doctissimorum aliquot virorum & suis mutuis, quibus examinantur tempora nobilissima: 1. Herodis Herodiadumque, 2. baptismi & ministerii Christi annorum non plus 2 1/4, 3. passionis, mortis et resurrectionis Dn. N. Iesu Christi, anno aerae nostrae vulgaris 31. non, ut vulgo 33., 4. belli Iudaici, quo funerata fuit cum Ierosolymis & Templo Synagoga Iudaica, sublatumque Vetus Testamentum. Inter alia & commentarius in locum Epiphanii obscurissimum de cyclo veteri Iudaeorum. (in Latin). Francofurti : Tampach. “anno aerae nostrae vulgaris”
"Until August of 2000 it was thought that the largest living organism was a fungus of the same species (Armillaria ostoyae) that covered 1,500 acres (600 hectares) found living in the state of Washington. But then mycology experts surmised that if an Armillaria that large could be found in Washington, then perhaps one just as large could be responsible for the trees dying in the Malheur National Forest in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. Researchers were astonished at the sheer magnitude of the find. This most recent find was estimated to cover over 2,200 acres (890 hectares) and be at least 2,400 years old, possibly older.
Thank God I’m not a Mayan!
Common use?! Nope. Individual exceptions...none of which are codified into law.
Write “CE” into your house contract instead of “AD” and the other party will have grounds to nullify a sale after the fact.
CE=Christian era. BCE=Before Christ even!
These profs seem to be bitter,clinging to their atheism and delusions of grandeur.
I've been trying to read this book but it's tough going.
It’s been used in history departments since the 1970s when I was a history major.
13 posted on April 15, 2008 8:47:01 PM MDT by huldah1776
Forty Years of Probation by Trial Page 266 of the book "Number in Scripture" by E W Bullinger
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua
As my mom used to say, people have been predicting the end of the World forever.
That's okay wid me. We've killed enough people anyway.
A blink in the universe.
I think that I read it will be in August 2012 when the 28,000 year Mayan calender is completed.
We shall see what happens.
It can’t be true if Nostradamus didn’t predict it.
Too many anti-Catholic threads.
“Y2K12
All stone calendars will cease to function!
The human sacrifice schedule will be thrown into chaos!
Stock up NOW on freeze dried human hearts.”
Just what we need; a bunch of bitter Mayans.
What will they turn to?
Only the profs from Pitt, Penn State, Carnegie Mellon...
B.C.E.—Before the common era, traced to begin in the reign of
Caesar Augustus. C.E. Common Era.. Just another way for academia to purge religion from all things scholarly. Wrote a paper once for a history course using B.C. (before Christ), and A.D. (Anno Dommini—in the year of our Lord), the professor initially wanted to count off 40 out of a possible 250 points for the paper. I asked him aside from that what it was in his view, he said it was otherwise a solid 250 point paper, but using B.C. and A.D. was not considered academically
professional. I raised caine with the department head and the academic affairs committee, he folded...
Yes, the Mayans have supposedly predicted our demise, but they failed to predict their own, and even worse, failed to save themselves. They also predicted a god would come who was actually just a man.
Pffft...
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Thanks Blam. |
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I was in Tulum two weeks ago and had a half-Mayan guide, who was prouder of his Spanish hertiage.
Oh yes, the lastest new idea added to their spiel is the Mayan traveled and traded with Asia.
I would seriously LMAO if a big rock fell out of the sky and landed on all the remaining Mayans or their decendants - HEY! YOU GUYS WERE RIGHT! GOD WAS TRYING TO TELL YOU TO MOVE!!!
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/strongest-dog.shtml
[cue creepy music]
prototaxite fossil fungus - Saudia Arabia (methinks it might have been mohammad...)
mark for later
Our guide in Costa Mesa said that the Spanish destroyed the Mayan culture.... they were a great society until those evil white people showed up.... blah, blah, blah,... proud of heritage. Oh, he was about 6’ 2” and from Mexico City.
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