2012

[Slytovhand]

Umm - that was a bad attempt at humour... as per the follow-on sentences....

But, slightly more seriously, yes, that's pretty much how I see it as well. Besides, if we presume a certain amount of 'bloody long timedness', say, another 15 billion years, does that mean they are required to have gone up that far? To me, it seems pretty fair that they be allowed to stop making their calenders go up to a certain period of time, and after that - don't bother til it becomes relevant!

After all, how long will a computer clock calculate to? Does that mean the end of the universe just because it hits that end date??? OH, sorry, I forgot the world ended 31st, Dec, 1999....

[Pedersen]

After all, how long will a computer clock calculate to? Does that mean the end of the universe just because it hits that end date??? OH, sorry, I forgot the world ended 31st, Dec, 1999....

Actually, a computer clock, as of right now, will run just fine until sometime in 2038. 64 bit processing will change that, though, and allow it to work just fine until sometime around year 230,000,000 (give or take a few million). That's going to take time to implement, though.

The Dec 31, 1999, issue was not due to the clocks stopping, but rather due to how to have code read data that was written 30 years ago and didn't include the centry.

Anyway, you did ask. I can be more pedantic, if you wish

[Slytovhand]

Well, no that's fine. (and cool). The point I was making was that 1 calender, across the entire planet (and, let's face it, making those things out of rock is no easy job!) ends on a particular date... so what???

Oh.. I get you now... 'clocks' =/= codes.. cool!

Maybe some high priest actually wanted them to go on further, but the artisans told them to go stuff it, it's bloody hard work, chipping away at that stone.. they could do it themselves if they really wanted it that bad....

[PepperElf]

and 2012 is the next year manson will be available for parole... hmm

[ArenaBoy]

We've had so many end of the world theories that I don't think the simplest life form could reproduce if they were all true.

Last night I went to see "Inglorious Basterds" and one of the previews was for that Roland Emmerich film "2012". That movie is going to cause a lot of unnecessary paranoia among the conspiracy nuts. I can see the tinfoil hats being in full view too.

[Mr Slugger]

Honestly I think the end of the world is coming, just not on that date. I mean let's face it the world is going down the crapper. Eventually it's gonna get us, but I don't think anyone can forecast the day.

[bunnyboy]

Interestingly, the Mayan Long count actually ends something like 16 septillion years AFTER it started (about 3500 BCE) which IIRC is about the same time when it's proposed the universe will die a heat death/collapse in on itself/in general end) but as for the 2012 thing, meh civilization might end if enough morons believe in it (hell the Kali Yuga's a long ways from ending, and Siddhartha's Dharma hasn't passed from the earth yet so there's at least TWO prophecies that don't point to an end of current time scenario not coming true)

In general it's half the reason I wish I could slap some of the newapagiccans around me in the back of the head a bit.

[Hyena Dandy]

I'm fairly good with knowledge of the Maya. The Maya just believed that was the end of their long-count calendar, not the end of the world. People are freaked out because it reaches zero, but the Maya were not saying that was the end of the world. Indeed, they predicted that after 2012 we would enter a new age of piece and prosperity.

So, yeah...

Interestingly, the Mayan Long count actually ends something like 16 septillion years

Bunnyboy, I'm gonna ask you to cite your sources for that one. I've done a lot of study on the Maya, and I've never found something that said that. I'm pretty good at the Maya date system.

The long count starts at 19.19.19.19.19 and December 12th 2012 is when it hits 0.0.0.0.0... And then starts over at 19.19.19.19.19

The periods are because the Maya use a base 20 system, as opposed to our base 10. So really the number for them would be something like if we had a calendar that reached 0 every 99999 years.

[Fashion Lad!]

My opinion is summed up quite nicely in the following:

http://www.cracked.com/article_17445...-bullshit.html

I agree with BroomJockey.

Besides, you can take any large body of written work, pick certain letters out of it and claim it says something or predicted something. Anyone read the Bible Code? Once they circled out letters, it looked like a word find at best.

The Mayan calendar probably ended due to the fact that they were starving to death where they were because their population had reached an unsupportable number and they weren't getting the rain they needed for their crops.

[Hyena Dandy]

The Mayan calendar probably ended due to the fact that they were starving to death where they were because their population had reached an unsupportable number and they weren't getting the rain they needed for their crops.

The Mayan calendar was a fixed thing, it didn't vary based on their situation.

The calendar has always counted down, and December 12, 2012 is when it hits 0.

[Fashion Lad!]

Meh. I never got too much into end of the world scenarios or when it's going to happen. I did read up on the Mayans, but not their prophecies.

[bunnyboy]

I'm fairly good with knowledge of the Maya. The Maya just believed that was the end of their long-count calendar, not the end of the world. People are freaked out because it reaches zero, but the Maya were not saying that was the end of the world. Indeed, they predicted that after 2012 we would enter a new age of piece and prosperity.

So, yeah...




Bunnyboy, I'm gonna ask you to cite your sources for that one. I've done a lot of study on the Maya, and I've never found something that said that. I'm pretty good at the Maya date system.

The long count starts at 19.19.19.19.19 and December 12th 2012 is when it hits 0.0.0.0.0... And then starts over at 19.19.19.19.19

The periods are because the Maya use a base 20 system, as opposed to our base 10. So really the number for them would be something like if we had a calendar that reached 0 every 99999 years.

http://www.famsi.org/research/vanstone/2012/index.html for one, for another the Mayanists and Schele & Freide seem to have made this their career goal, and G. Jeffrey MacDonald "Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse?" USA Today 3/27/07. for the third, Plus as I said, NONE of the other end times prophecies have even come remotely true in general mellinianlism is one of the worst types of eschatological ideas, and makes me wanna Gibbs Slap people just for buying into hype, nothing happened in 1000 CE, nothing happened in 2000 CE, and nothing's gonna happen in 2012 CE, mainly because, great astronomers or not, it's shown nowhere else.

Of course they did regard it as a great clebration day, since much like us celebrating hte millenium it only comes about once every 5217 years or so.

[Daskinor]

I remember reading somewhere that allot of archaeologists and historians are not even sure the Calendar ends on December 12, 2012. That it could be off by decades, but most likely a few months to a few years.

[bunnyboy]

And personally I think it's a bit of a "Nostradamus Effect." Some things they got right, but damn if I will accept a definitive date for the end of the world, hell all we know about Ragnarok is it will happen, and much like the second coming of Christianity, there is NO SET DATE.

And like I said, 90% of the other end of the world prophecies that have a certain "date" are either thousands of years off, or are something that must be such (ie the Buddhist coming of the next Buddha being when Siddhartha's Dharma has passed from the world, Ragnarok, and even if looked at right just about ALL eschatology)

This would be the real reason, it's just mellinialism wrapped in ancient Meso-American clothing, and as said before I hate this because unless it's something along the lines of the sun going red dwarf or the heat death of the universe (which are still only theoretical on when they'll happen) they're nothing more than hype over ZOMG-End-Ov-Teh-Wurld!!!1111elventy1!

[crashhelmet]

I'm unable to cite specific references because I did all of this research while in high school oh so many moons ago, but I can add to the discussion. Not about the Mayan calendar though. The Aztec Calendar.

The Aztec Calendar is composed of 7 rings and works its way clockwise from the center out to the last ring. When each ring is completed, it is said that the world ends. When the 7th ring completes, it is believed that that is when Quetzalcoatl (The Aztec version of Jesus, if you will) will return and Judgement Day will occur. The Aztec Codec says we are currently in the 7th ring of the calendar. The symbol at the completion of the 7th ring is Ollin, the Nahuatl word for Earthquake. I don't remember anything about the world being reborn or recreated after this final ring. The previous 6 yes, but not after the 7th.

There had been much debate about how to translate the calendar because it's composed on 2 different systems. One is lunar and the other is solar, if I remember right. One for religious purposes and the other for agricultural. At the time I did this research (1992-93) it was believed that the 7th ring would complete its cycle on 12/24/2004. I remember this date because it's Christmas Eve and I always thought that would be a fucked up day for the world to end, but found the irony when tieing it into the Christian religions. It's since been changed to go along with the other "experts" that believe in or are jumping on the 2012 bandwagon.

Here's something to chew on though. The Aztecs were a migratory people that were told to travel until they found an eagle clutching a snake in its talons. It is often speculated that they traveled from as far as South East Asia, due to the similarities in cultures with the tribes of that time.

On 12/26/2004, 2 days after what was once calculated to be the day the world was to be destroyed by an earthquake, an earthquake happened with a magnitude of 9+ causing a tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in multiple different countries in South East Asia.

The rest is semantics. 600 years ago, we didn't know how big the world was or whether or not it was round. How big was their "world"? Something may happen in 2012, but I doubt it will be the Armageddon.

CH