Mayan 2012 Doomsday Prophecy?
I am in Honor’s English 3, and we are currently studying Native American folklore, and what our next assignment is, is to pick a myth or prophecy, study it, and stand up in the middle of class and present it to the students as if we were telling a story, no paper to look at and no help once so ever. With 2012 approaching, I thought it would be suitable to tell the Mayan 2012 Doomsday Prophecy. What I need from you guys is, someone with knowledge in this area of history, to tell me more about the Mayans belief of the end, their calendar, how they thought their science played a part in the prophecy seeing how they were very educated astronomers, and anything that may be of use to me.
No I do not believe in this prophecy, so please do not answer back saying how stupid I am for believing in it. I just think it would be very suitable to tell this tale.
Answer by The Astronaut
If the Mayans could predict the world ending in 2012 AD, why couldn’t they predict the end of their civilization and save themselves?
Give your answer to this question below!
Everybody thinks the world will end in 2012 because that’s when the Mayan calendar ended. That’s really all I know.
Mayans didn’t predict the end of the world,just the end of their calender.
It’s not a doomsday prophecy.
It’s the end of the calender. It starts over anew.
The Mayans didn’t prophecy the end of the world….. they made a huge calendar and that calendar just ends with no explaination…. alarmists and peopel who like to cause trouble have turned that into an end times prophecy….. The mayans never said the world will end.. they just ran out of room to continue the calendar.
it just marks the conclusion of a b’ak’tun – a time period in the long count calendar — linear rather than cyclical, keeping time in approximate units of 20.
20 days made a uinal, 18 uinals (360 days) made a tun, 20 tuns made a k’atun, and 20 k’atuns (144,000 days/about 394 years) made up a b’ak’tun — a world age.
as far as the “apoclyptic” nature of this — it is ALL interpretation, which the calendar leaves very open.
the popol vuh (a compilation of creation accounts from the k’iche’ maya/colonial-era) indicates we are living in the 4th world.
the gods first creating 3 failed worlds, followed by a successful 4th world in which humanity was placed.
in the maya long count, the 3rd world ended after 13 b’ak’tuns, or roughly 5,125 years….which then resets @zero (which corresponds to 11 august 3114 BC in the gregorian) which means that the 4th world will reach the end of its 13th b’ak’tun on december 21, 2012.
what they never mention however – is that the mayan long count also gives ‘prediction dates” well past the 13th baktun……for example stele 1 at coba…..gives a date twenty units above the b’ak’tun, placing it either 41 octillion years in the future OR the past. (that is 3 quintillion times the age of the universe as determined by cosmologists).