Posted on 12/31/2011 5:36:59 PM PST by DogByte6RER
Mayans couldn't even see their own End of Days
MY prediction for the year 2012, which I am told begins tomorrow, is that the world will not end. This is despite the belief that the Mayan calendar says that it will. The calendar was devised 5,125 years ago by the Mayans of Central America, a people who never had the wit to invent the wheel, but it runs out on Dec. 21, 2012. The End of Days, so to speak.
If, as some seers suggest, thats an accurate prediction, you have less than a year to get your affairs in order and shed your worldly wealth so you can go unencumbered into the darkness. Feel free to put that burden on me. You know where to reach me.
On the other hand, before you write those cheques and put them in the mail or hand over your liquor cabinets, you might want to consider some other things. Its possible the Mayan calendar ends next Dec. 21 simply because they couldnt count as high as 5,126. Lots of people cant, and who cares when you are counting things like calendar days, which are arbitrary anyway.
The year as we know it today has 365 days, except that it doesnt exactly. That is why 2012 -- theres that date again -- as well as being the Mayan end of world, is also a leap year in which February has 29 days instead of its usual 28 so that we will not fall behind in time. One supposes that, if it werent for leap years, we would have a few more months at least before the Mayan calendar comes crashing down on us.
Another thing to consider is that the Mayans, clever as they were -- their calendar was unusually accurate even though it didnt go very far -- were not any more prescient than any other people. They didnt know what the future holds any more than you or I do. If they had known, they might have been better prepared for the Spanish conquest that began in the 16th century and has reduced them today to being not an empire, not even a nation, not even a tribe. For the Mayans, the End of Days came cruel and early, long before their calendar had run out.
People forget that calendars are arbitrary things, that we measure time by our wrist watches and wall clocks that gods and cosmic forces pay no attention to. The world is too much with us, thankfully, and, one hopes, will be for some time. In the meantime, its worth remembering some age-old advice -- live every day as if it were your last. Dont wait until Dec. 21 to make things right with your relatives or to kick up your heels. But if you insist on believing in Mayan doomsday prophesies -- and I know there are some of you out there -- dont forget to write.
I saw a cartoon similar to that: Two Mayans are looking at the stone wheel and the one says, “I’m out of room on this one.” The other one says, “That’s really gonna screw with somebody in the future!”
The Mayans didn't even invent the Long Count. Variations were in use by the Olmecs and Zapotecs long before the Mayan civilization emerged around 300 A.D. The Mayans were excellent astronomers and mathematicians and they simply refined the system to their own religious beliefs and conventions.
Your Irwin Allen comment made me smile too! It's too bad he's no longer around to produce disaster flicks. Between the 2012 and the Gorebull Warming nonsense he'd be able to rake in millions.
Here’s a reputable link, from The University of Bristol:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2008/212017945233.html
It’s longer than that. If the year ending in “00” is evenly divisible by 400, the extra day is not omitted. That’s why we had a February 29, 2000.
Very true....there are many variations on the Long Count used by all the Mesoamerican cultures.
Irwin Allen was one-of-a-kind that’s for sure....I think of Roland Emmerich as his spiritual successor, and I believe Emmerich once said that Irwin Allen was a major influence for his own disaster films. “Independence Day”, “The Day After Tomorrow”, “2012”; in each and every one, human civilization comes to an end in grand style!
Coincidentally, I’m planning on spending next Christmas with some Ugandan friends of mine.....in Kampala. I’ve known them for years, and they invited me to spend the Christmas and New Year’s season there, so why not? It’s certainly warmer there in December than it is in Europe. And the way I look at it, if Roland Emmerich’s “2012” turns out to be a tad more prophetic than what could be assumed at first glance, then I’ll be sitting pretty; if you recall, the only land mass left above water at the end of that film......
was Africa. Bwahahahahahaha!
Good news is they’ve got medicine for that
lol
Remember years ending in ‘00’ have no leap year.;)
They do once every 400 years. Ala 2000 had a Feb 29
Well aren’t you nice. Thanks for that link.
Happy New Year !
Not quite here yet, a little less than an hour and a half to go, but Happy New Year to you, too.
I was hoping to have a little conversation along the lines of this, that actually sidesteps the hype as well as the ridicule, to see if there could actually be some astronomical basis, but no takers thus far.
The timing of that Austrian impact is interesting, to me at least. Not sure how to account for the difference between Julian and Gregorian calendars, but it appears to be right in line with a “cycle” in the Mayan one.
So, with their being accomplished astronomers, could this “age” ending have anything to do with a recurring astronomical phenomenon?
I still have no idea. Between the wild hype and the end of the world speculation on the one hand, and the jeering and ridicule on the other, I honestly can’t tell one way or the other.
“If they had known, they might have been better prepared for the Spanish conquest that began in the 16th century and has reduced them today to being not an empire, not even a nation, not even a tribe.”
.
For the record, by the time the Spaniards arrived, the once great Mayan empire was just a shadow of it’s former self, reduced to a cluster of warring city-states confined to the Yucatan. By that time it was the Aztecs who dominated Mexico and were the main targets of the Spanish conquest.
Remember “LIFE IS SHORT”
“Heaven is ETERNAL!”
1John
Forgot to add that......
Hell is also ETERNAL!
Happy New Year!!!
Apocalypse means unveiling, in the sense, “The Revelation is an unveiling of seals, horns, et cetera and the Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.” The meaning of the word is “unveiling.” I know the people at The History Channel are going to be surprised.
“Greek: ἀποκάλυψις” ...hey DogByte...you’re pretty close. Apocalypse is actually the combination of two Greek words” “apo” (”from” or “to separate”), and “καλÏπτω” (to hide or cover)....so the meaning in English is basically “to separate or unhide what is hidden.” The meaning with regards to the Book of Revelation in effect is a term used as a metaphor to describe curtains being pulled apart to reveal the theater/play which the audience (John), can now watch. At least that’s what my three years of Greek in seminary combined with the class I had with Dr. George R. Beasley-Murrey teaching through The Book of Revelation in the original Greek led me to believe.
BTW...though it’s all very interesting that Dec 21, 2012 completes the 13th Bakun of the Mayan long count calendar, I’m still planning on buying Christmas presents for the family starting on Black Friday next November. I’m also not too concerned about the Pre-Trib, Dispensationalists who get their eschatological “inputs” from the daily news, are right either believing that “the end is near.”
Right Right Right
Inversnaid
THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.
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