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Unless you've been living under a rock for the past couple of months, you've probably not been able to escape the movie trailers, hype, and even SyFy channel (yes, SYFY channel..that should TELL YOU SOMETHING) specials regarding the Mayan "prediction" that the world will end in 2012.
First, some background on the Mayan calendar. The "long count" Mayan calendar is based, basically (I am oversimplifying a little bit), on interlocking wheels. You can think of these as gears where as the days pass, a bigger gear of seasons pass, which then slowly causes another bigger gear to pass. Finally, you end up with a gear that marks the passing of ages that marks the passage of a total of 26,000 years. There are 13 of these ages on the "big gear".
The Mayan long count calendar reaches 13.0.0.0.0 on December 21st, 2012. Does this mean that the world is going to come to an end on that date? Does this mean that a huge apocalypse is going to rip the earth apart in huge explosions and other hollywood-like demolitions? Are we all going to cease to exist as time itself comes to a crashing halt?
UM. NO.
What we're looking at here is the Mayan equivalent of the Y2K problem. The Mayans, when constructing their calendars and the wheels/gears/ whatever they call them - constructed them to mark the passing of 26,000 years. When you think about how long that is, its a ridiculous amount of time. They probably said to themselves, "Nobody is ever going to need more than 26,000 years on a calendar." Well, let's see. Where have we heard that mistake before? Oh yeah: No one is ever going to need 4 digits to store a year in a piece of computer software.
So if you're smart, you'll get people to give you all their worldy possessions on December 20th, 2012. Then, on December 22nd, 2012 - sell them all back at a premium. Call it the "sucker surcharge", a fee for being such a gullable moron that they believed the world was going to end because a civilization without the ability to predict the future basically ran out of storage space in their gear-based calendar system.
I personally am thinking of having an "end of the world" party on December 21st, 2012. I had one on Jan 1, 2000 and I'll be there laughing at the mindless masses as they cringe in expectation of doomsday. I should be able to pick up some dirt cheap real estate, too.
You just wait and see.... you'll be sorry!
False: "They probably said to themselves, 'Nobody is ever going to need
more than 26,000 years on a calendar.'"
True: The Mayans believed the end of one period ("gear") led to the
beginning of the next. They also believed that these 26K-year periods
repeated themselves. So the first period in their long calendar will be
repeated - start over - on Dec 22, 2012 because the current period ends on
Dec 21, 2012. Perhaps Mark Twain gave us the best interpretation of this
when he wrote, "History does not repeat itself. It rhymes." :)
