The End of ze World
4.12.09 by DeusWe once had a poll in the Free Press about whether the world will end in 2012 - fifty percent if not more of the nine votes (maybe I’m remembering something incorrectly) said yes. Now I wonder - how many people actually know why the Mayans thought that the world would end? I got this from an authentic Mayan descendant: they had a base-20 counting system, and a denoted dates in the form a.b.c.d.e. Starting at 0.0.0.0.0, the date they believed they were created (some 5000 years ago), the first digit was incremented for each day that passed. When it reached 20, it returned to 0 and the second digit was incremented. There were specific day values for each position (first position is one day per each count, second is twenty for each count, I don’t remember the third and fourth, and fifth position 144000 days per increment). December 20, 2012 is when the calendar reaches 19.19.19.19.19 and December 21 is when it goes back to 0.0.0.0.0. So essentially, people are getting excited (ahem) because of the quirks of their numbering system and a religious belief that has been disproven by the fact that humans are considerably older than ~3000 BC. Of course, the likes of this gentleman aren’t much for the idea of us having been apes at some point (better to have been created by an omnipotent third party), but we have found some pretty old bones in the ground. But I digress.
That is not to say that the world won’t end in some sense - it’s just almost certain that we can’t predict the date by some mysterious prophecy. Right now, a third of the world (2.3 billion) is positive for tuberculosis. Some strains are incurable. We’ve got the Large Hadron Collider that can theoretically do some very interesting things (black holes, tears in reality, Satan, and all that science fiction that it probably won’t do but might [except the Satan thing]). When they originally tested the atomic bomb, they thought that it might ignite the atmosphere and put Outback out of business, but they detonated it anyway - who cares if our steak isn’t medium-rare and doesn’t have all the delicious tapeworms as long as we can blow up Japan a thousand times over? Shouldn’t we wait until we can do these things in space before we risk cracking our planet in half? Some lab is producing carbon nanotubes for the US government at a rate of 1g a day, which can stretch to 18 miles. They need about 140000 miles to build a viable space elevator, so my idea is that someone with the money should put together sufficient funds to sponsor an international collaboration on building this space elevator. I digress again.
But in any case, we can’t predict when the world will end. It almost definitely won’t happen because someone arbitrarily thought so.
Edit: So it seems that Wikipedia’s version of the Mayan apocalypse contradicts what I’ve written here. I got my information from an actual Mexican native so I’m more inclined to believe that, but I honestly don’t know which one is correct. Mine makes more sense, so I’ll leave it for now.
118 Comments
Apparently the mayan calendar does NOT reset in 2012- according to wikipedia, December 20, 2012 is actually only 12.19.19.19.19. And yet the “2012″ section at borders remains depressingly large.
I think we’re seeing the hippie in Deus with this post.
If you are willing to believe that the Mayans could predict the end of the world, I think that 13.00.00.00.00 would be enough of an inauspicious number anyway.
I’m not sure why Wikipedia says that, but I was told this by an actual tour guide in Mexico. But again, who knows.
i missed that wikipedia also said that the mayans thought the previous creation actually ended on a 12.19.19.17.19. does that sound anything more like what you heard?
Not really; unless I’ve forgotten something, the guy said specifically that both the day of creation and 12.21.2012 were 0.0.0.0.0. He had a board on which he wrote that–should’ve taken a picture.
It seems, though, that the discrepancy between the possible explanations is just another reason this prediction isn’t likely to come true.
It’s possible that both Wikipedia and the tour guide were right in some aspect. Maybe 19.19.19.19.19 DOES refer to to the date 12.20.2012, but world actually ended way back in 13.0.0.0.0 (or 746 BCE according to the tour guide).
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