in the mayan calender 2012 is the last day, most people should no that, but read the bottom for my question?

Question

in the calander of the mayans they say that 2012 december 21 is the day when the earth will end. do u belive in this. if so how do u think will it end???
P.S it is not just the mayans that said it would in "end" in 2012 people in china and indians said it to. my brother is freaking out. need something to calm him down. i am olny 12. my bro is 10.

Answer 1

Yea. Their calendar does end on 12/21/2012. Apparently, there is going to be a cosmic event - our Sun is going to align up with the center of our Milky Way and the Earth is going to "bobble" on its' axis. This happens once every 26,000 years. You may be comforted to also know that although their actual calendar ends, there are writings of theirs that pertain to what happens afterward. The only thing I can tell you is this - don't be worried. You could walk out your front door tomorrow and be run over by a bus. Anything could happen between now and then. Just be thankful for your life and be as good a person as you can be.

Answer 2

1) When the Mayans were working on their calender they, decided to take a break. They went out for Chinese food and when they got back, they found someone had stoled their stone carving tools. Being a victim of a thief in Mayan society was the ultimate badge of shame. In order to avoid being shunned by society, they make up a story about the world ending to explain why they didn't go beyond the date of Dec. 21, 2012.. That's how it all began. 2) There is going to be an alignment when the Mayan calender ends. There will be an alignment of people wanting their money back from me. Since they all think the world is going to end, I am asking that they send me all their money on the rational that they won't be needing it any more. Sorry, no refunds. 3) The Planet X you are hearing about is the planet Nibiru. This was a story created by some ancient Babylonian pranksters. They made up a story about a planet on a 3630 year orbit around the Sun. This planet is suppose to cross into the inner solar system in 2012 and do all kinds of bad things to the Earth. There guys had a really bizarre sense of humor. I mean who would want to pull a prank like this just to scare people 3000+ years after you died? Ho, well, I hope they are getting a good chuckle in the after life.

Answer 3

As several folks have pointed out, 2012 simply marks the end of a cycle in the Mayan's very complex calendar - not the end of the world. Under their system you simply start over with 1 again, just like we do on January 1, or at midnight.

The Mayan calendar is extremely complex and based on a series of astronomical observations - they really studied the heavens - but then again - jungle nights were really dark and they must have been able to see sooo much more than we do today. - The calendar includes several sets of cycles - each of which comes to an end at a different time, and very rarely do all three come to an end at one point - I suspect that 2012 is simply one of those times (5000+ year cycle). I would not be worried about 2012.

The mayan calendar is a great system to study and if you are interested there are some very good websites to get you started. Some are likely to be over your head at this point on the math needed, but a simple one can be found at http://www.civilization.ca/civil/maya/mmc06eng.html

Good Luck and tell your bro not to worry

Answer 4

I don't believe it any more than the hundreds of other end-of-the-world predictions which have come and gone without incident. If you say there are other sources for this 2012 date, aside from the Mayan calendar, I'd be willing to bet it's false claims made by people to try to get this dumb thing to look more legitimate.

Some people just can't resist claiming the end of the world. Why, I don't know. But it does freak out kids and that's why these things make me angry. The whole thing is bunk. Hogwash. Mayan astrology is no more legitimate than any other astrology. They are all bunk. When I was a teacher, on two occasions during my career, there were widely advertised predictions of the end of the world and I had to console distraught kids in my classes. On one of those occasions, there was even a fundie teacher who went around telling these kids the world was going to end on October whateverth at exactly 9:00 am. What a jerk!

And when I was about ten, in boarding school, a bunch of us huddled around a bible one night waiting for the apocalypse because another one of those stupid predictions was circulating around. There is always some bogus, mystical source for the prediction. Well, we're all still here, as we will be in 2013. Oh, sure, something catastrophic could happen at any time, but NOBODY knows about it now.

And as far as this alignment garbage is concerned, I challenge anyone to show me what alignment is going to take place, involving the solar system and the galaxy. This is bunk, too. But even if some obscure, trivial celestial relationship occurs, we know from past experience that these things cause absolutely nothing to occur on earth. Sorry, but the person below me is incorrect in suggesting that something "happens" at one particular time with respect to the precession of the equinoxes. It is a continuous process and will have no noticeable effect on us at all over periods of less than thousands of years. Same with polarity reversals.

And what does it mean for the sun to line up with the center of the galaxy? It's meaningless to talk about alignments between two points. That's like the sound of one hand clapping. Now if they are saying the sun, the earth, and the center of the galaxy will line up, then at least that's something. But what? From our vantage point, the sun crosses the galactic plane twice a year and crosses near the center of the galaxy once every year. So what? And the other great circles, the ecliptic and the equatorial, don't come anywhere close to aligning with any galactic axis, polar or equatorial. Not now, not in five years, not in 500 years.

Answer 5

Did you learn this from the History Channel? You should keep in mind that they are mostly sensationalist and often distort the facts. The Mayans believed that the universe repeated in cycles, and on the day the dates could no longer be calculated, a new cycle would begin (this happens once every 30,000 years or so, as they believed). If something is truly special about this day, and somehow these ancient cultures were able to calculate it - you should keep in mind that the Mayans, at least, believed it was a good thing, and the calendar restart would have been cause for a giant celebration - like an ultimate new year or new millenium, they would celebrate the coming of the new cycle.

Answer 6

The reason 2012 Dec 21 is given as the end date has to do with the way the Mayans counted time. As of the winter solstice 2012, the time keeping system simply breaks down and no more dates can be calculated.

That doesn't mean the world ends on that date, it just means that the old Mayan time keeping system doesn't work after that date.

Answer 7

Not end, change. Instead of concentrating on 2012, you might want to look into, the other major Mayan calender events. They predicted many ends, death doesn't always mean death, it can mean the death of an old way and a birth of a new. Please don't take things so literal. You'll be fine. Study the Mayan calender a little bit more closely and you will see what I am talking about.

Answer 8

I have a friend who is native american. I wasn't sure about the 2012 business but all I can tell you is that native american's concept of the Apocalypse as catholics do. According to them, the end of the world does not mean the world going up in flames or the final destruction. It is actually the end of a period and the beginning of another but does not mean that you or your brother will just go up in smoke. I also lived in guatemala among mayan-quiches whose worldview coincide with the latter.

Answer 9

I got the impression that it wasn't that the Mayans thought the world would end in 2012; it was just that that was when the calendar ended, and they didn't feel the need to make another one...at least, not yet. And then their civilization collapsed before they could, hence the legend.

Answer 10

I have actually spent time in the Mayan ruins. I have been to the observatory that the priests lived in when they made the calendar. I would say that their civilization collapsed before they were able to finish. Which leads to...where did they go...but back to the subject at hand...to help your little brother, maybe you guys could do some research on the Y2K scare-and how insane all of that was.