recall 2012 ? That was the yr thatLonesome Georgedied , NASA ’s Curiosity bird of passage landed on Mars , andFelix Baumgartnerskydived from the edge of blank . It was also the year of the fully grown anti - climax in history as the earthly concern conk out to finish on December 21 – the date that , agree to some , the Maya had counter theapocalypse .
In accuracy , the ancient Mesoamerican civilisation made no such prediction , and archaeological finding evoke that theMayaactually expected the globe to stay to exist indefinitely . Their calendar , though , did derive to the end of a major round in late 2012 , run to New Age misinterpretations about the close of day .
The End Of The Mayan Calendar?
The Maya were expert timekeepers and , like us , divided the passage of prison term into recurring periods . Rather than reckon in neat centuries and millennia , though , theMayan calendarconsisted of two lock systems known as theHaab – which consisted of 365 day – and the260 - dayTzolkin .
Making forward-looking imperial units of measurement seem positively square , the Mayan calendar tracked both of these timetable simultaneously until they in the end align every 52 years . Scheduling event further ahead than this was therefore not potential , which is why the Maya also machinate the so - called Long Count calendar .
Each Long Count consist of5,126 yearsand was split into 13 adequate segments of roughly 394 years , lie with as Bak’tuns . The Maya begin counting the previous Long Count on August 11 , 3114 BCE , which means the 13thBak’tun of that cycle was due to finish on December 21 , 2012 .
As with our own timekeeping scheme , the end of Long Count was forthwith followed by the offset of the next , and there is no indication in the archaeological record that the Maya await time to grind to a stoppage when any given cycle came to a conclusion . However , in 1987 , author Jose Arguelles issue a book in which he wrong see the Mayan calendar as a countdown to the end of time , spark a worldwide fascination with the Mayan apocalypse theory .
As the date come near , people in Russia became so worried about the forthcoming global extinction that the Minister of Emergency Situations had toissue a statementtelling everyone to chill out . Meanwhile , authorities in the French village of Bugarach stepped in to stop crowds gathering on a mountain where some said analien spacecraftwould amount to rescue them .
Yet while all of this frill was clearly rooted in a canonic misunderstanding of the Mayan calendar , apocalyptophiles were fall in a smidgen of actual hope by the breakthrough of an ancient repository in southerly Mexico .
The Tortuguero Prophecy
go out to the 7th century CE , Tortuguero was a shrine or tombdedicated toa local rule call B’ahlam Ajaw in the southern Mexican province of Tabasco . archeological site at the site revealed an inscription – make love as Tortuguero Monument 6 – which hold a cryptic reference to Bak’tun 13 .
The only important reference to the end of the Long Count ever base , the text has never been fully rede , part because some of the glyph have fade . However , the remaining figures advert the return ofBolon Yokte , a Mayan god associated with war and creation .
In 1996 , archaeologists David Stuart and Stephen Houston published a rough interpretation of the textbook , which they labeled ‘ The Tortuguero Prophecy ’ . Though the twosome never said the inscription prefigure the end of the globe , their work was unsurprisingly usurp upon by peddlers of the Mayan apocalypse idea , fuelling the hysteria surrounding the 2012 finale .
Whenre - analyzing Tortuguero Monument 6a few years later , both Stuart and Houston concluded that the inscription probably was n’t referring to any event succeeding the end of the Long Count after all , but was only document thededicationof the shrine on January 11 , 669 . The scribe , they say , identify the day of the month by count backward from the 13thBak’tun .
The monument , therefore , does not describe the final stage of the cosmos , but plainly references the finale of the Long Cycle as a means of keeping track of time .
So What Did The Maya Believe?
The Maya amply expected a new Bak’tun to get down when the premature one do to an end . No judgement day , no planetary implosion , and for sure no exotic savior are cite in any of their surviving artifact – and they had no doubt that the sun would rise as normal on December 22 , 2012 .
Luckily , research worker see definitive test copy for the continuation of animation as we know it just in time to put multitude ’s mind at eternal sleep . In May 2012 , archaeologist in Xultun , Guatemala , unearthed the oldest and most completeMayan astronomic tablesever get a line . These calendar stretched at least 7,000 years into the hereafter , indicating that the Maya did n’t simply bar look at 2012 .
Like all other Mayan timekeeping systems , the freshly give away calendars are likely to represent cycles that repeatad infinitum . In other words , the ancient civilization that is most synonymous with apocalyptic prediction in reality thought the earth would never end .
