A Brief History
On December 21, 2012, people across the globe waited for the end of the world! Of course, we know the world did not end then, but why did so many people think it would?
Digging Deeper
Digging deeper, we find the roots of this “prophecy” in the Mayan calendar.
The Mayan civilization not only made impressive pyramids and other buildings, but also was observant of astronomical phenomena and based a long term calendar cycle on those observations. In the cycle that was computed, the last date was December 21, 2012. Many people since then have taken that to mean somehow the Mayans “knew” the world would end at that time, hence a 5000+ year calendar with what appears to be a definitive end.
The great Mayan civilization disintegrated sometime before the Spanish explorers found the ruins, perhaps just before the arrival of the Conquistadors.
Actually, December 21, 2012 is only the end of that cycle, and apparently the reason the Mayans did not plot another cycle is that it was so far in advance that there was no immediate need to do so.
Many other persons ignored the scientific evidence that this calendar held no doomsday prediction, and that modern astronomy indicated no pending disasters, and a wide and diverse collection of people across the globe came up with all sorts of unsupported ideas about how the world would end and justification for believing that.
Some of these die-hard conspiracy theorists postulated that rather than an abrupt end of the world, December 21, 2012 would instead be a milestone date when the beginning of the end would commence. Related doomsday prophecies allegedly “confirmed” the Mayan “prophecy” and many people were too willing to follow the doomsayers and ignore the scientists.
In any case, the world did not end and no substantial disaster occurred to make us think doomsday was coming soon. Again, this happy outcome did not stop many people from turning every little event that did occur as a “sign” or omen that the prophecy is true and is unfolding right before the unbelieving eyes of the skeptics!
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Historical Evidence
The unsubstantiated fears of the world ending in 2012 based on Mayan prophecies resulted in a flood of books, coins, and music about suspected coming apocalypse…
Gardiner, Philip, dir. 2012: Mayan Prophecy and the Shift of the Ages. Reality Entertainment, 2009. DVD.
Gilbert, Adrian. 2012: Mayan Year of Destiny. A. R. E. Press, 2006.
ThunderBeat. Mayan Landing 2012. CD Baby, 2003. Audio CD.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Shark at Lithuanian Wikipedia of The Mayan fire ceremony held at dawn in Tikal on 21 December 2012 that took place in the main plaza in front of the Temple of the Great Jaguar, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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