The 2012 Incident and Why the Ancient Maya Religion is False
Credit to Abu Zakariya from IERA (taken from the book “The Forbidden Prophecies”)
The ancient Maya civilisation, known for advanced writing, mathemat- ics, and astronomy, flourished for centuries in Mesoamerica, especially between 300 and 900 CE. It reached the peak of its influence around the sixth century CE. Along with impressive stone monuments and elaborate cities, the lost Mesoamerican civilisation left behind traces of its sophis- ticated calendar, known as the Long Count calendar, which scholars have spent decades struggling to decipher. Calendars such as the Gregorian calendar typically start at year zero and then linearly increase over time. However, the Maya calendar is different as it acts like a cycle. It tracks roughly 5,125 years and then resets at year zero.
In the decades leading up to the year 2012, popular culture latched on to theories that the end of the Long Count calendar’s cycle—which coincided with the date December 21st, 2012—represented the end of the world in the Maya belief system. The prediction that the world would end in 2012 is the most widely-disseminated doomsday tale in human history, thanks to the internet, Hollywood, and an ever-eager news media. According to a Reuters global poll, in the lead up to December 21st, 2012, one in ten people felt some anxiety about that date.
Source: Reuters website. Accessed on 1st November 2017:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mayancalendar-poll/one-in-sev-en-thinks-end-of-world-is-coming-poll-idUSBRE8400XH20120501
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Russia’s Minister of Emergency Situations issued a public reassurance that the world would not come to an end. French authorities barred access to a mountain in the village of Bugarach, where some believed a UFO would rescue them. The United States saw a surge in the sale of underground bunkers and ammunition as survivalists prepared themselves for the worst.
December 21st, 2012 came and went without incident. The mass belief that the Maya prophesied the end of the world was all based on a complete misunderstanding of their calendar. Those who believed in doomsday 2012 failed to take into account the intricacies of Maya timekeeping. For the Maya, December 21st, 2012 was simply the day that their calendar went to the next cycle and reset at the year zero. According to the Maya, when one great cycle ends, another begins. In fact, the Maya predicted the world would most certainly not end in 2012. Archaeologist William Saturno discovered a series of numbers painted on the walls at a Maya complex in Guatemala. The calculations included dates that go far into the future: “The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this. We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It’s an entirely different mindset.”
Source: Wendell G. Johnson, End of Days: An Encyclopedia of the Apoca- lypse in World Religions, p. 234.
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With the 2012 doomsday that never was, we have an example of a proph- ecy being attributed to a people who never actually made it in the first place. In spite of this, people continue to be fascinated by the culture and beliefs of the Maya, and still look to their writings in order to try and gain insight into the future. It is unlikely that the Maya had the ability to prophesy because they failed to foresee the Spanish conquest of their own lands. The early sixteenth century saw the Spanish Conquistadors arrive on their shores and destroy the Maya civilisation. The Spanish colonisation entailed forced conversion to Christianity and those Maya who refused to abandon their native religious practices were punished with arrest and torture. The artefacts of the Maya were actively destroyed and all but a few of their sacred texts burnt. It’s difficult to believe that the Maya had the power to see into the future and could prophesy about other cultures and peoples, when they failed to foresee the end of their own civilisation during their lifetimes.