Really: who says that the Mayan calendar literally referred to the end of the world, rather than the time of an era? I personally believe the latter is the case.
But the article titled ‘End of the World Postponed’ by Yahoo News today makes nonetheless a good read. Here’s a brief summary, below which you’ll find a link to the news article:
Good & Bad News for Believers in 2012 Mayan Apocalypse
good news:Mayan “Long Count” calendar may not end on Dec. 21, 2012 (and, by extension, the world may not end along with it).
bad news: if the calendar doesn’t end in December 2012, no one knows when it actually will.
New Perspective
- “A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook “Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World” (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years.
- That would throw the supposed and over-hyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events.
- “The Mayan calendar was converted to today’s Gregorian calendar using a calculation called the GMT constant, named for the last initials of three early Mayanist researchers. Much of the work emphasized dates recovered from colonial documents that were written in the Mayan language in the Latin alphabet, according to the chapter’s author, Gerardo Aldana, University of California, Santa Barbara professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies.”
- “Later, the GMT constant was bolstered by American linguist and anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury, who used data in the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a Mayan calendar and almanac that charts dates relative to the movements of Venus.
- “He took the position that his work removed the last obstacle to fully accepting the GMT constant,” Aldana said in a statement. “Others took his work even further, suggesting that he had proven the GMT constant to be correct.”
Controversy
But according to Aldana, Lounsbury’s evidence is far from irrefutable:
- “If the Venus Table cannot be used to prove the FMT as Lounsbury suggests, its acceptance depends on the reliability of the corroborating data,” he said. That historical data, he said, is less reliable than the Table itself, causing the argument for the GMT constant to fall “like a stack of cards.”
- Aldana doesn’t have any answers as to what the correct calendar conversion might be, preferring to focus on why the current interpretation may be wrong. Looks like end-of-the-world theorists may need to find another ancient calendar on which to pin their apocalyptic hopes.
Over to YOU
What’s your take on this matter? Are you prepared for 2012? What does that mean to you?
Source: Yahoo News
More info: Mayan Calendar and 2012 prophecy:
The Mayan calendars are methods of measuring time that were developed by the ancient Mayans. They are rather impressive and have evoked the curiosity of many astronomy and/or archaeology
experts. They have been studied extensively and they appear to be interpreted well. However, there is one calendar, developed by the ancient Mayans that has caused a great deal of controversy and frustration. The interpretation of the Mayan Long Calendar has left a surprisingly widespread and significant number of people on the cusp of panic.
The so-called “Maya (or Mayan) Calendar” is actually only one of four calendars developed by the ancient Mayans. The calendar that is widely known as the “Maya Calendar” is actually the Mayan Long Count Calendar. All of the Mayan calendars served a purpose. The purpose of the Long Count Calendar was to measure time well into the future or past. Quite simply, it was used to measure hundreds or thousands of years, as opposed to the days, weeks and months in our modern calendars. The Mayan Long Count Calendar is round and covered in ancient Mesoamerican hieroglyphs. Each of these hieroglyphs represents a specific time frame. These are arranged to count the passage of time in multiples of 13 and 20.
Experts have deduced that the Mayan Long Count Calendar began on August 11 or 13, 3114 BC. Based on the hieroglyphs on the calendar, it has been calculated that the calendar ends on either December 21 or 23, 2012. Therefore, the amount of time that the Mayan Long Count Calendar measures is roughly 5,125 years. It is the belief of many that “doomsday” is going to occur on the last day of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. In other words, they believe the world will end on December 21 or 23, 2012. Well, most of them believe it is going to be December 21. What exactly is going to happen is not certain.
Source: Associated Content