Talk Elections

Facts are funny things:

Mayan prophecy: The world won’t end, as a newfound calendar goes on and on and on (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/mayan-prophecy-the-world-wont-end-as-a-newfound-calendar-goes-on-and-on-and-on/2012/05/10/gIQA03s3FU_story.html?hpid=z6)

By Brian Vastag, Thursday, May 10, 2:15 PM

The ancient Mayans were masters of time, keepers of good calendars.

And now we have one of their timekeepers’ workrooms to prove it.

In a striking find, archaeologists in Guatemala report the discovery of a small building whose walls display not only a stunningly preserved mural of a brightly adorned Mayan king, but also calendars that destroy any notion that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012.

These deep-time calendars can be used to count thousands of years into the past and future, countering pop-culture and New Age ideas that Mayan calendars ended on Dec. 21, 2012, (or Dec. 23, depending on who’s counting), thereby predicting the end of the world.

The newly found calendars, which track the motion of the moon, Venus and Mars, provide an unprecedented glimpse into how these storied sky-gazers — who dominated Central America for nearly 1,000 years — kept such accurate track of months, seasons and years.

Plus they didn't include leap years, so the world would've already ended.

It's not like we needed this discovery to tell us that they didn't predict the world would end. The only thing that happens in terms of their calendar this year is that a long cycle ends and a new one begins, and some idiots (or smart jerks who wanted to sell books to idiots) decided that was the prediction of the end of the world.

This. I've had to explain this to people I know repeatedly now.

     I've seen this nonsense countered in about a dozen different places, & I don't think once more will make a difference. Just like with the 5/21 nuts, I think it better to chortle at the doomsayers.

This is breaking news!

Actually, the Long Count ends on December 21 (or 23) 2012.  The well-known stela at Copán in Honduras, which I have visited, records this date as a 29-figure number.  For the Maya and a few other mesoamerican civilizations, the end of the Long Count does correspond to the end one cycle of the world and ushers in another cycle.  From what I have read, this was not a time to fear, but a time to rejoice, because the incoming new age is a reassertion of order.  I'd read about Saturno's discovery in one of my issues of Bostonia, the Boston University Alumni magazine.  (Not a recent issue either. Saturno is a BU professor of archaeology, and they were spotlighting his discovery about three years ago, as I recall.)  Saturno's discovery does not change the fact that the Long Count (the current version of the world) will still end on or about the winter solstice of this year, so it is accurate to say that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in what we now call 2012.  Whether you want to make that a day to rejoice is another matter.  Saturno is smart enough to know all this, but the reporters probably wanted something pithy to print.