Mayan calendar ending in the year 2012........?

Question

Does anyone know any info on the Mayan culture and about their calendar ending in the year 2012 ?? I've heard that it could be the end of the world.....??

I don't believe it's going to end in 7 years...but why I'm curious is WHY they choose that year....what reason??

Answer 1

The Mayan Long Count calendar doesn't end in 2012. The 12th Baktun ends, and the 13th Baktun begins (on 12-21-2012). It's like when our calendar went from 1999 to 2000 6 years ago and everyone thought the world would end. Same hysteria.
There is a school of thought which believes when the Maya constructed the Long Count they deliberately chose the winter solstice of that year (which was not called 2012 then, as Jesus hadn't been born) for the start of the important 13th Baktun because on that day, there is a grand astronomical alignment that only happens every 26,000 years and to the Maya signified the rebirth of the sun.
Those two things together have somehow been twisted by the ignorant and uninformed into meaning end of the world.
EDIT:
The Mayan culture's height pre-dated the Aztecs. The Aztecs didn't even use the Long Count; the two calendars they adopted from the Maya were the 260-day sacred calendar and the 365 secular/solar calendar. It's also not a question of the Long Count calendar being "found" (although information on the calendars are in some of the few surviving codices); the Maya used the Long Count to date monuments and carvings, and clever archeologists figured out how it worked and correlated it to our calendar. In fact there is a carving in Palenque which is dated to the year 4772 (in our calendar) so obviously the carvers didn't believe their calendar, or time, ended.
The Aztec "calendar" the person says was found by "legal aliens" (whatever that means; people who live in Mexico aren't aliens of any type, they are Mexicans) was the immensive Sun Stone, also called the Calendar stone because it has calendar glyphs on it. But that is the sacred calendar, not the long count, and has nothing to do with this discussion.

Answer 2

The Mayas did no longer are looking forward to something. it quite is basically the top of the Mayan calendar! And on the top of the Mayan calendar (December 21, 2012) there could be an remarkable social gathering. No apocalypse, purely an excellent party.

Answer 3

Take a deep breath and relax.

I've studied the culture, extensively, in and out of Jungles.

No offense to any doomsday sayers, but if I lived my life as if the end was imminent, I'd likely forget about its beginnings, and its very cherished,,, in the moment, moments.

If ya wanna believe 2012 is the end, then I suggest you have less than 7 years to do whatever you wanna do. If you live that way however, I also suggest you'll miss doing what ya oughta.

An aside to that: The Maya have long been skewed as the most peaceful, reverent, of the 3 major Native cultures in ancient SO. America. They very much were not. I most enjoy them because they were the most progressive, and their ancestory is strong, even to this day, but they had no compunction about blood sacrifice, to appease whatever GOD happened to be insisting at any one time.

Steven Wolf

Answer 4

i think the mayans got the calender thing from the aztecs because the aztecs beleived that the end of the earth was in 2012 also. here it is.

the aztecs believed that there has been four ages of the earth we are in the fifth), each ending with some terrible event that happened to bring about the creation of some creature. for example, at the end of the second age, a great wind started blowing that blew everything off the earth but two people who survived by holding on to a tree. as a result of hanging on to the tree, they grew tails and became monkeys.

they believe that this age will end with earthquakes on december 22, 2012. so i think that the mayans took this idea and just created a calender to go with it.

Answer 5

The Mayan Calender, as we can interpert it does not go past the year 2012, it does go back to before Egypt. Yet it mysteriously stops at 2012, by some calculations.
Some have stated that it is 2024, its still close, and awesomely strange. This particuliar Calender was found in Mexico City, (I guess by Legal Alians), But I am uncertain if all Mayan Calenders that have been found, if any else have been found, correlate and jibe with the one in Mexico City.

Answer 6

Here's some interesting reading on the subject

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread7939/pg1