(June 16, 2012 at 3:12 am)Epimethean Wrote: They didn't predict the end of the world any more than we do when we toss our calendars in December. They had simply run through one calendar of an age or time period. It's a big pile of trumped up mumbo-jumbo that the Mayans are unlikely ever to have considered.
According to their religion, the fourth world was going to end on the 13th b'ak'tun.
There is a strong tradition of "world ages" in Mayan literature, but the record has been distorted, leaving several possibilities open to interpretation.[16] According to the Popol Vuh, a compilation of the creation accounts of the K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world.[17] The Popol Vuh describes the gods first creating three failed worlds, followed by a successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous world ended after 13 b'ak'tuns, or roughly 5,125 years.[18][Note a] The Long Count's "zero date"[Note b] was set at a point in the past marking the end of the third world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to 11 August 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar.[19][Note c] This means that the fourth world will also have reached the end of its 13th b'ak'tun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, on 21 December 2012.[1][Note c] In 1957, Mayanist and astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson wrote that "the completion of a Great Period of 13 b'ak'tuns would have been of the utmost significance to the Maya".[20] In 1966, Michael D. Coe wrote in The Maya that "there is a suggestion ... that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the 13th [b'ak'tun]. Thus ... our present universe [would] be annihilated [in December 2012][Note d] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenom...k.27tun_13
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
