apocalypse tomorrow!

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Peter44 Wrote:
I always understood that Mayan prophesies suggested the world would end in 2012.

(1) No,that is incorrect. The year 2012 is simply the part of the Mayan calendar,known as the Mayan long count.

(2) So what if it did? I have never seen any evidence of accurate fortune telling or prophecy of any kind.

OK,Biblical prophecy written after the event sometimes gets it kind of right. It can also be spectacularly wrong.ER: NT claims Jesus fulfilled biblical prophecy for the Messiah; he didn't.(ignoring for the nonce that the biblical Jesus is almost certainly myth)

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The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal (base-20) and base-18 calendar used by several Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is sometimes known as the Maya (or Mayan) Long Count calendar. Using a modified vigesimal tally, the Long Count calendar identifies a day by counting the number of days passed since a mythical creation date that corresponds to August 11, 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar.[n 1] The Long Count calendar was widely used on monuments.

According to the Popol Vuh, a book compiling details of creation accounts known to the K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world.[26] The Popol Vuh describes the first three creations that the gods failed in making and the creation of the successful fourth world where men were placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous creation ended at the start of a 14th b'ak'tun.
The previous creation ended on a long count of 12.19.19.17.19. Another 12.19.19.17.19 will occur on December 20, 2012, followed by the start of the fourteenth b'ak'tun, 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21, 2012.[n 7] There is only one reference to the current creation's 13th b'ak'tun in the fragmentary Mayan corpus: Tortuguero Monument 6, part of a ruler's inscription.
Maya inscriptions occasionally reference future predicted events or commemorations that would occur on dates that lie beyond 2012 (that is, beyond the completion of the 13th b'ak'tun of the current era). Most of these are in the form of "distance dates" where some Long Count date is given, together with a Distance Number that is to be added to the Long Count date to arrive at this future date.

Despite the publicity generated by the 2012 date, Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, stated that "We have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012.[31] "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Florida. To render December 21, 2012, as a doomsday event or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in."[31] "There will be another cycle," says E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute (MARI). "We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this."[32]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_long_...Long_Count