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The idea that the year 2012 presaged a world cataclysm, the end of the world, or the end of human civilization, became a subject of popular media speculation as the date of 21 December 2012 approached.
- The Ancient Maya
- The Calendar Round
- The Long Count Calendar
- The End of The World?
Of course, there is no concrete evidence that the Maya–a diverse group of indigenous people who lived in parts of present-day Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and northwestern Honduras from about 2000 B.C.–could truly predict the future. They did, however, develop one of the most sophisticated and complex civilizations in the Western Hemisphe...
The first Mayan calendar, known as the Calendar Round system, was based on two overlapping annual cycles: a 260-day sacred year and a 365-day secular year that named 18 months with 20 days each. (Five “unlucky” unnamed days were tacked on at year’s end.) Under this system, each day was assigned four pieces of identifying information: a day number a...
But because the Calendar Round measured time in an endless loop, it was a bad way to fix events in an absolute chronology or in relationship to one another over a long period. For this job, a priest working in about 236 B.C. devised another system: a calendar that he called the Long Count. The Long Count system identified each day by counting forwa...
The Mayawho developed the Long Count calendar believed the end of one cycle would simply signal the beginning of another. According to this logic, a new Grand Cycle would start on December 22, 2012. However, some people in the U.S. and Europe came to believe that the calendar would not reset itself. Instead, they said, the end of the cycle would br...
Dec 20, 2011 · It's remotely possible the world will end in December 2012. But don't credit the ancient Maya calendar for predicting it, say experts on the Mesoamerican culture.
Nov 30, 2012 · Dec. 1, 2012 -- It was 10 years ago that veteran NASA scientist David Morrison began to answer a question a day from the public about the origin of life on Earth, evolution and the mysteries of the cosmos.
- 2 min
- ABC News
December 21, 2012 has arrived, and the world has not come to an end, despite the feverish expectations of millions worldwide believe the Mayan calendar foretells our collective doom.
Dec 18, 2012 · That the world will end in 2012 is the most widely-disseminated doomsday tale in human history, thanks to the internet, Hollywood and an ever-eager press corps. Recent hurricanes, unrest in...
Chances are you have heard that the Maya predicted the end of the world on December 21, 2012. This is the day when the Maya Long Count calendar cycle comes to completion. You may have also heard that the world will supposedly be destroyed by an earthly or cosmic catastrophe.
