2012: Judgment Day or Disaster Movie Excuse?
2012 is set to be a momentous year, the 1st winter youth Olympics are going to be held in January, the US will hold a presidential election and the UK is going to observe the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth. In case you are looking towards 2013 do not get your hopes up, given that based on some predictions, everything is due to end on December 21. If you happen to enjoy Christmas, make the most of this year and the next, given that according to the Mayan calendar, they will be your last. Possibly.
Before Europeans appeared in meso America the populace utilized an intricate combination of calendars to record their days. The Haab or solar calendar, both a timepiece and Mayan art form, was created from eighteen 20 day months and also a time period of 5 days called Wayeb to bring the sum to 365.
The Tzolkin on the other hand was a cycle of 260 days, 13 times 20. No-one is aware quite exactly why 260 days were picked, though it appears that the numbers 13 along with 20 were both important to these earlier cultures. There exists a likelihood that it was related to the time in between a woman’s first missed period and the birth of her offspring, and helped predict when a infant would be born, however various other ideas about crop planting and astrology observations could be equally accurate. Most dates could possibly be established by a combination of the Haab and Tzolin, the cycle would come along once every 52 years, that is approximately once in every life span.
To observe cycles longer than fifty-two years the Mayans applied another system which we now refer to as the Long Count calendar. This system is found in both Olmec and Aztec art and wasn’t invented by the Maya. Dates run forward from a mythologic day zero, the particular date from the start of the existing world. Just like all cultures the base units were days, with 20 days in a uinal and 18 uinals in a tun (more or less a year). A K’atun consisted of twenty tuns and twenty of these a b’ak’tun. Once more the number thirteen is important and numerous inscriptions in Mayan art display the date changing at the conclusion of 13 b’ak’tuns and spoke of incidents to occur on this particular date. This lead to the notion that the Mayans anticipated something substantial would occur near the last day of the 13th B’ak’tun. That day is calculated to be 21st or 23 December 2012. What exactly might we expect?
Well according to a large number of scholars nothing whatsoever. There are some references to things happening about that point in time in inscriptions, but nothing genuinely concrete, therefore it is really surprising just how much fascination 2012 seems to be generating. Some state there may a religious evolution, while other people refer to a momentous galactic alignment, though this draws on the location of the galactic equator, and that can not be established, this does not appear very likely. Yet other people worry about planet Niburu.
Collision with planet X (or Niburu) was predicted since the year 2003, but any planet close enough to be in collision with the Earth in 2012 would now be plainly visible to astronomers in the night sky. Unfortunately this fictional collision has become confused in the press with the actual and expected approach of a large asteroid referred to as Eros which is likely to pass the earth in 2012. Eros is greater than the asteroid that we think killed the dinosaurs 65 millions years back but since it will never end up being closer than seventy times the distance from the moon, it is not likely to do any damage.
Looking at the Mayan calendar is a great reason to contemplate exactly how we measure time and why, to comprehend the solar cycles which still dominate our lives and to admire the fine art of an culture. As to planning for the end of the world, that still appears just a little premature.