By Brian Thompson
I. The Setup
I don’t know about you, but I still have a basement full of canned goods and ramen noodles leftover from Y2K. At least, I think I do. I have heard an awful lot of squeaking down there over the last eight years, but I always assumed it was just…
Crap.
Anyway, we all know how Y2K turned out. There was no technological meltdown. Most of us are still here, eating perishable food and refusing to engage in incest to repopulate the Earth. Apocalypse averted. Unless, of course, you count the Bush administration.
But we’re not out of the woods yet. Turns out the Mayans had all sorts of astronomical, astrological, and numerological skills our TV-addled Western culture simply ignores. By braving the malaria ridden jungles of their ruins and studying their carvings, we can know what they knew: that the world will end on December 21, 2012. Cue the doomsday music.
No, that’s no good. Add some more percussion. You know, something worldly—like the NPR station on a Saturday afternoon. You know what? Just use that cut from the Apocalypto soundtrack.
That’s better. Really puts you in that “we’re all going to die” kind of mood. Let’s get ready for some can opening carpal tunnel syndrome and lots of desperation sex!
Wait, the world’s not going to end? We’re all going to vibrate to a higher plane of being? Well, can we still get some desperation sex?
II. The Findings
To understand the 2012 hullabaloo, you have to understand the Mayan calendar system. It’s actually very simple. You see, they kept several calendars. Some only measured days. Some measured lots of days. A few measured, like, a week plus two days. And then there was this other one which only measured about forty-five minutes, but that’s probably just how long it took the stone carver to give up from confusion.
We’re interested in the one called the Long Count calendar, so named because it counts for a long time. 1,872,000 days, to be exact. After this period, the calendar resets to zero and is repeated all over again. Even though the Mayan Classic Period (you know, before their albums started to suck and they totally sold out) ran from about A.D. 300-900, the Long Count calendar’s year zero is 3114 B.C. No one really knows why the calendar begins there or why it covers the time period that it does, and if someone tells you he knows, feel free to poke him in the eyes and extinguish the fire in his lying pants. In my line of work, I understand that real mysteries like this are catnip for mystical, pseudoscientific explanations, so let me make it clear that just because we don’t know the reason behind this calendar, it doesn’t mean that psychic powers, astrological alignments, or UFOs were involved. There’s a lot we don’t know about the Mayans—largely because their civilization was so decimated.
But that hasn’t stopped the world’s tinfoil hat wearers from trying to fill in the gaps themselves. It’s easy to believe that a reboot of one calendar signals the end of the world when you completely ignore the fact that the beginning of said calendar doesn’t signal the beginning of the world. Unless you believe that the world started 5,000 years ago, which some mentally handicapped people (Kirk Cameron) do. (I don’t really know if Kirk Cameron believes the world started 5,000 years ago, but I wouldn’t put it past him. I wouldn’t put anything past him. Not since he killed my uncle!)
(Kirk Cameron didn’t actually kill my uncle.)
(Yet.)
Of course, not every crazy person believes the world will end in 2012. Some believe that the world will simply change in 2012. Because the Long Count calendar reboots on December 12, the Winter Solstice, there are all sorts of vague astrological hypotheses about its significance. It’s actually very unsurprising that the calendar would end on a solstice. Those are very important dates to any civilization that lives and dies by agriculture. You have to figure out the order of the seasons in order to guarantee you don’t starve to death next year. But do a Google search on 2012, and you’re likely to find all sorts of scribbled diagrams of the Earth lining up with the Sun lining up with Naboo. It’s all supposed to mean something, but no one can agree on what it means. Are we going to “vibrate” to a “higher plane?” Is our “global consciousness” going to be “raised?” Instead of blasting the Mayans for not including an owner’s manual with their calendar, these nuts go on and on about how wise and prophetic this ancient civilization was. And they also don’t mind raping the Mayan culture if it means they can shoehorn in some crystals or meditation sticks or whatever else they manufacture in their basements and sell to you for $19.95 (plus shipping).
III. The Conclusion
There’s no denying the Mayan civilization was a great one. They produced countless works of art, they built a complicated system of roads, and the architecture of their cities is both sturdy and tasteful (especially if you’re into plumed serpents, which I am). But they also brought on severe drought through their massive deforestation programs, and then there’s the whole human sacrifice thing. Great? Absolutely. But wise? No more than most.
Which isn’t to put them down. They were humans, after all—not a race of mystical wizards. Attributing powers and abilities to them that they didn’t actually possess is doing a disservice to both intelligence and history. Plus, there’s the obvious question: Why didn’t they predict their own demise?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a rat problem to handle.
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About The Amateur Scientist: Brian Thompson is a professor of amateur science at a major imaginary university and a regular blogger at CHUD. He has been able to read and write for over seventeen years.
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Brian Thompson is a professor of amateur science at a major imaginary university and a regular blogger at CHUD. He has been able to read and write for over seventeen years. 
BUT, the Mayans also took care of tooth problems by putting bits of softened wood into cavities and packing it in until the tooth broke and they could pull out the shards….way to be proactive about dentistry, Mayans!
Anyway, I've read about this stuff before in The Celestine Prophecy. It was an interesting read, but a really crappy novel. Should've been non-fiction.
Wow. You’ve outdone yourself, Brian. Scathing and hilarious.
Being a bit of an ancient history buff, I’m naturally fascinated by the Central and South American cultures that we white folks so efficiently decimated a few centuries back. I recently watched an entire documentary about the deciphering of the Mayan writing system. It’s so intricate and creative! So it’s no big surprise that their calendar system would be, as well.
There are always people willing to ascribe supernatural or extraterrestrial meanings to things they simply don’t comprehend. I’m sure there was a great significance to 12/21/2012 for the Maya, but I don’t know if they really believed it will be the end of the world. Perhaps they just predicted a great global change — I can buy that. They might have extrapolated the time it would take based on observations of human behavior. Might not be accurate to the hour, but there are certainly large-scale societal and natural shifts in progress. (Those things are always happening, of course, but we seem to be more aware of them just now. And they at least appear to be happening more rapidly than usual.)
So… Mayan civilization, neat. Big changes on the way, check. End of the world? Not so much. I hope.
Also…
“(Kirk Cameron didn’t actually kill my uncle.)
(Yet.)”
Brilliant.
Dear Brian,
You poor uninformed bastard. It is obvious that you will not be ascending with the rest of us.
FYI, I cannot wear my tin-foil hat while on the computer because my higher vibratory state combined with the reflective power of tin causes my computer (and half the neighborhood) to short out. So, I won’t be able to give you all the reasons we will be ascending and you won’t. Although the three pairs of rubber gloves, each lined with lead will give me some protection it won’t give me enough time to evade the “greys” so I cannot stay “online” any longer. I’ve already endangered myself just giving you this notice. Just remember “the truth is out there!” PS many don’t know this, but Kirk is one of us!
Attn: Brian,
I was wondering if you would consider an idea…An idea relating to 2012, that poses many questions. Were the aliens that visited the mayans actual inhabitants of earth before it had cleansed itself thousands of years ago, or possibly from another planet? If it we’re true and the mayans were given factual information based on the aliens experiences and knowledge from there past generations. Did they come back at a time when the earth had cleansed itself again to share there knowledge of things to come because of there ancestors experiences or there failures or knowledge of what should be done to make life better? Is 2012, going to happen, and soon after become a time again where humans will travel and live in space to repeat what has been done thousands of years ago. Which is not to disrupt earths habitants but to give them a new beginning of knowledge to help them evolve and become a better society than Earths inhabitants of the past, that being us(humans) this time. And could it be that we periodically will visit them to see how they are evolving, and advance them with some knowledge. So, that they won’t make as many mistakes in there future as we did in our past? Will we help right the history for the new generations (inhabitants of earth), so they can navigate there future for a better, cleaner, healthier life for generations to come. We might have mistaken the creator in our past for who he/she really is. It could have been our ancestors all along. I have come to this conclusion because the mayans referred to aliens visiting also being of a higher intelligent being, with futuristic crafts decending on Earth thousands of years ago. We have taken some of this knowledge passed on by the aliens, by the mayans. We have excersised some of it in building a space station, we also grow food in space. We can live and survive in space. We can create babies with stored sperm cells and eggs without a mother. We have an understanding of DNA, we also can duplicate, mutate or munipulate DNA to create a different looking human. So maybe the aliens are our ancestors who created us and we in the years to come will re-create what might have been done thousands of years ago. If not, millions of years in the past. Remember life repeats itself. We live, we die. Plants grow and die and in some cases reproduce themsleves. Is it possible ,that the survivors of what ever is to become of humans on earth in our life time. Could it be that we become the recreators and considered a god or a alien of some sort to the newly developed earth years after 2012. Keep in mind that if this were true, than we wouldn’t want the first beings on earth, which we created know to much of our existence, because it could upset life on earth. After the earth has cleansed itself, they will start with the basics in exploration of a new world to them. Once they have demonstrated and have learned how to survive and make use of what they have to develope a society than, and only then would we consider sharing some of our knowledge and the tools to help them make better choices. For example; what fuels are clean for there environment and teach them of planetary alignments. How to understand the human DNA, how to build for the survival of future humanity only better than earths inhabitants before 2012. Does this make any sense???
Maybe the mayan calender will be used again only they will refer to us as humans this time round instead of aliens. And ofcourse they will have prophets and a god and a jesus like figures in the society.
Hope I’m not piggy-backing on this site.
I believe it is a repetitive occurence on earth. Funny the calendar as all the answers and it gives accurate datesand tell us that it ends on dec 21, 2012!
Just a thought for the curious minds.
Hey if you read about the Mayans a little more before you make a claim then you would see that they did predict their own demise. That is why the leader just turned himself over to be killed.
Now that was great.