'But actually, the Maya's never predicted anything concrete about 2012. That may have something to do with our ill knowledge about Maya culture: when the Spanish ransacked the land, they burnt literally every Maya book they could find. Only a handful of scriptures survived. And in them, there's not a clue about what happens when the Maya calendar ends.

So what awaits us in 2012 basically is an open question. And as with so many open questions, countless doom preachers, semi-prophets and other crackpots pop up to provide an answer. The interpretation you hear most: 2012 will mark the coming of a new, glorious age of wisdom and peace. It will be Age Of Aquarius at last, with a world full of peace, love and understanding.

The reasoning behind this is actually not that stupid. The Maya's didn't really believed in endings: their conception of time was circular, with every end being the beginning of something new. So, 2012 shouldn't be an exception.

Don't forget: there are many, many religions predicting some kind of end to the world. And the Maya prediction attracts a lot of attention now, merely because their end date is so well-defined, and because the Maya Deadline is only a couple of time-ticks away.

And what about that awesome phenomenon of the Sun sitting in the heart of the Tree of Life? Well, that happened before. The Sun passes the Tree every 25,800 years. That's a lot of years, but since the Earth exists for an astonishing 4,5 billion years, the Earth survived the `divine event' more than 150,000 times already!

What's more, the last six times the phenomenon occurred, modern humans already walked the planet. Obviously, it didn't have much effect on our spiritual lives. It certainly didn't stop the Spanish from butchering some 800,000 Maya's in the sixteenth century.'

From a fantastic site; http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm

I can't believe people actually buy into this crap. No offence meant to anyone who believes in it but... seriously??

i hate people that bring up the mayan calander thing. whoever interpretted the calander as ending in 2012 is an idiot, and wrong. i can't remember who wrote this, but i saved it and yeah. read it, they're smart:

"There *is* another cycle, as a matter of fact. Like I said, conspiracy theorists are idiots who can't be bothered to do some research. Saying the world ends on 2012 because the Mayan calendar does on that date too is a lot like saying "the world will end on December 31, because that's when the current count ends!". No shit. We just add a number and restart the count.

Based on their count, Mayans believed the world was created at 0.0.0.0.0 (roughly 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar). A Baktun cycle runs for about 144,000 years. The year 2012 marks the end of a Baktun, bringing the overall count to 13.0.0.0.0. No idea who was the idiot who said it ended there. It just gets to 13.0.0.0.0, and then you count 13.0.0.0.1, 13.0.0.0.2, and so forth.

Mayans believed the end of the count was significant, but for them, they all were. They made huge celebrations about it, not unlike our "new year's eve". Besides, there's not a single archaeological record that hints at the fact Mayans believed the world was coming to an end. As a matter of fact, a tablet at Palenque mentions that king Pacal wrote down that people should celebrate his eightieth cycle anniversary of his accession in 1.0.0.0.0.8 (note how there's an extra cipher in this one), which comes to be October 21st, 4772. They clearly did not believe the world was ending on 2012."

interpretted the WORLD ending ...not calander.

I've actually never heard of a respectable scientist or scholar ever say that the world will end in December of 2012. The theory is that the Mayans might know something, considering the calender makes an abrupt stop in the middle of December. Research will tell you nothing of 2012 in ancient Mayan documents of any kind. The only evidence ("pseudo-evidence") of the "conspiracy" is a sudden end to the calender. Nothing more.

nor have i.

and being that they were all slaughtered and had their stuff destroyed, i'd say that theory is probably on the money ;)

Of course, I wrote my post before reading the thread, in turn, not reading Acid Fairy's post. I just don't know enough about Mayan culture to have an educated theory, but brief research will tell you that there is nothing in the surviving Mayan documents that hints anything at 2012.

An educated theory would be that the Mayans were killed off before they got to finish their calender.

There is nothing wrong with believe in the Mayan Calender,it does not mean they are stupid. I love researching this stuff,and of course no one knows what is right and what is wrong. Hell for all we know the world can end tomorrow. Just live your life like you want to that is what I say. -Valencia

people who believe in "the world's going to end" conspiracies, to me, are stupid. only because of how many time to world hasn't ended in the billions of years it's existed. researching is fine, but the calendar isn't exact a belief system, so you can't really "believe" in it. i don't think the world will end just because the calendar stops. i think anonymous source said it best when he said it probably just stopped because they were all killed. people put so much ridiculous meaning behind things that could so easily be explained. there's not enough info around to know why the mayans stopped there calendar, so jumping to conclusions and thinking the world will end is in my opinion, and some other people's, wildly ridiculous and does not demonstrate much going on in between the ears.

but if people are happy living in a panicked state about something so asinine, then yeah let em live like they like it. -shrug-

yall worry to much, just live your life like rihanna says

I remember discussing this idea in one of my Chicano Studies classes. One of the points that was brought up (before the circular cycle thing was mentioned) was that even if for some reason the Mayan Calendar just stopped in 2012, that doesn't necessarily mean the world will end on that day. Maybe the Mayans just didn't see the human race lasting for SO LONG so they just stopped the calendar. Fuck, maybe they got tired of writing all that shit down! ;)

If the world ends, whatever. We just better go out with a bang.

My theory on the end of their calendar, is maybe the guy that made the calendar died after making that many dates, and his successor looked at his work, said, "2012 ?!!! Like anyone here is going to be around for that shit. Let someone else update the calendar once they get closer to the end date." And that was that. Of course, the Mayan civilization completely disappeared some half a century ago...

* Millenium, not century. Duuhhhhh

if the end of the world happens, it happens, if it doesn't it doesn't

it doesn't pay to be paranoid and scared.

bwuahahhaa i dont believe in this stuff but i just posted it to see what other ppl had to say LOL

wasnt there a thing about oh say 8, going on 9 years ago saying that all technology would end at midnight December 31st // January 1st 2,000?? Yeah, Y2K!!!! *looks around* it seems to all be ok... Or am I the only one noticing all this?

Yeah, I remember the hype about that. I was so scared because everyone was paranoid. We are still here today! lol
valencia

In response to the Y2K thing, I had a friend who wanted to watch the New Year brought in on t.v. in Kiritimati, Christmas Islands, Kiribati (because they're the furthest forward time zone) to see if the world would end at midnight their time. Like, if the world ended at midnight their time, we still had 15 hours to live. HAHAH. What an idiot.

Has anyone seen the stupidly cheesy movie, "2012: Doomsday?" That movie is ridiculous on so many levels.

Biblically speaking, we simply do not know when the end will come, but we know that the end will come with the second coming of Christ. In terms of specific eschatology, I'm an amillennialist.

how many times has the world suppose to of ended?
I think we should all stop worrying about when and if the world is going to end and just live for the moment.. what's meant to be will be and there's nothing we can do about it.
there, that's my opinion on it, lol.