Posted on 10/20/2010 7:42:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
he end of the world is coming! Or here, maybe. Or did it already happen?
It's a good news/bad news situation for believers in the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. The good news is that the Mayan calendar may not end on Dec. 21, 2012 (and, by extension, the world may not end along with it). The bad news for prophecy believers? If the calendar doesn't end in December 2012, no one knows when it actually will -- or if it has already.
A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World" (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and overhyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, much as our year ends on Dec. 31.)
The Mayan calendar was converted to today's Gregorian calendar using a calculation called the GMT constant, named for the last initials of three early Mayanist researchers. Much of the work emphasized dates recovered from colonial documents that were written in Mayan language in the Latin alphabet, according to the chapter's author, Gerardo Aldana, University of California, Santa Barbara professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies.
Later, the GMT constant was bolstered by American linguist and anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury, who used data in the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a Mayan calendar and almanac that charts dates relative to the movements of Venus.
"He took the position that his work removed the last obstacle to fully accepting the GMT constant," Aldana said in a statement. "
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Heh. Putting faith in a calendar developed by an extinct civilization... what a joke.
The professors can assess it and the press can discuss it, but I plan to be ready.
If the Mayans were so smart why are they all dead?
who would believe that crap anyway
why didn’t they predict their own destruction?
Well, we have the founder of FAMILY RADIO, named Harold Camping who is on TV and Radio informing us that Jesus Christ is coming back on a SPECIFIC DATE — May 21, 2011 ( we barely have 7 months before that big day ).
How did he come up with that date ?
His Answer: Based on his reading of the Bible and analysis of numbers.
See here for stations that broadcast his teachings :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Radio
So, let that be a lesson to you kids, the end of world never manages to get here before that term paper is due.
Just like Y2K ... the world’s biggest over-hyped non-event. Remember when our computers were supposed to explode and civilization would come to a screeching halt?
Didn’t see that one coming did they?
Ready for what?
I mean if the world is ending there’s no point in being ready for anything.
Ha! I was going to make a Harold Camping reference as well.
I still stand by the conviction that the only reason the Mayan calendar ends on Dec 12, 2012, is because the guy carving it got tired and decided to quit and no else else felt like picking up his chisel.
Hahahahahaaaa!
Exactly. LOL!
You know, a lot of people worked really hard to make that into a "non-event".
Dadgum!!!
This means I AM going to have to save for retirement!!!
He must have missed what Jesus taught in Matthew 24:36-51. If Jesus does not know when the Father will end things, how can any human?
Not so smart after all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.