Weird, Wicked Weird:
The end of the world as we know it?
By Kathryn Skelton , Staff Writer
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Source: www.sunjournal.com

"How to Survive 2012."

"The World Cataclysm in 2012."

"Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civilization's End."

Spot the trend?

Dozens of new books predict the end of the world or something just short of it on Dec. 21, 2012, now less than five years away.

At the root of the hype is a rare galactic alignment and a broadly interpreted end of the ancient Mayan calendar. Some interpretations: It's the grand finale. A signal to aliens. The start of a transition for better or worse. Or nothing at all.

Oddly enough, it's a Western preoccupation.

David Carey visits Guatemala, home to millions of modern Mayans, for field work every other year. Mayans he's met aren't preparing for the end.

"I hear much more about it here than I do there," said Carey, a University of Southern Maine history professor.

"When they're amongst themselves, they're not looking at it quite as seriously as they might otherwise convey to tourists who want to hear them talk about 2012 as this propitious date."

Nonetheless, his prediction: "It could be the end of the world for certain individuals who plan on it."

So what's this all about?

About 2,000 years ago, the Maya, skilled stargazers, figured out when the December solstice sun would line up with the center of the Milky Way galaxy, according to Colorado author John Major Jenkins. It's an alignment that only happens every 26,000 years.

Mayans took that date - Dec. 21, 2012 - and used it as the end of their Long Count calendar, a measure of 5,125 years.

It was intended to be very important. The ends of cycles of all different lengths have significance for that culture.

"Among the Maya there was worry that when the end of a particular cycle would happen, that the world could potentially end because it was a time of a lot of transition. If something major was likely to happen, then it could conceivably happen" then, said Steve Whittington, former director of the University of Maine's Hudson Museum.

There would be ceremonies and often sacrifices to make sure things went smoothly. Any bad happenings were often self-fulfilling, he said. For instance, nervous that you might be attacked, you might do something that triggered it.

At the end of a major cycle like the Long Count calendar, "They'd really be nervous. But what's happened is New Age people and people who are looking for more mystical things in their own lives who belong to our own society have taken on this idea of the danger of the end of a Maya cycle.

"The fact that they know at some point Maya civilization collapsed, there's a lot of mystery surrounding that. I think they've sort of projected their own need for something strange and dangerous onto somebody else's calendar," Whittington said.

That notion seemed to really take hold after the publishing of José Argüelles's book, "The Mayan Factor" and his support of the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, when people gathered at "sacred" sites to welcome a new era.

"His argument was that the Maya were actually extraterrestrial aliens," said Kenneth Feder, an archaeology professor at Central Connecticut State University and author of "Frauds, Myths and Mysteries." That book's sixth edition came out last month.

The idea was that aliens had been here, left clues and were due back in 2012, Feder said.

"I really won't be cleaning up my bank account or kissing the wife and kiddies goodbye sometime in December 2012. I'm figuring we'll all probably live to see 2013," he said.

What Jenkins anticipates: This 5,125-year cycle will close and the following day will kick off the next 5,125-year cycle.

In other words, life goes on. It's healthy, however, to sit back in awe that Mayans could have pinpointed such a date without telescopes all those years ago, he said.

"It flies in the face of a lot of the stereotypes and clichés that we get from the media regarding the Maya: They were blood-thirsty savages tearing out hearts and they deserved to be wiped out. Almost," he said.

But even Jenkins allows, some things may change - and already have.

More cults? Solar flares?

He believes that a look at the past 50 years, between technological advances and ecological issues, shows that the world is in a period of transformation.

"All those various markers indicate we do live in an unprecedented time right now," Jenkins said.

Researcher Jim Reed has given two presentations on the meaning of 2012 this fall for the University of South Carolina's Mayan conference and the Institute of Maya Studies down in Miami. He said people could anticipate this next cycle being tied with movement (earthquakes, solar activity) for 20 years on either side of 2012.

Carey and Whittington agreed that if something happens on an individual level, it will be of the person's own doing. Preparing for the worst can bring it about. Whittington said he wouldn't be surprised to see more fringe group and cult activity as the date gets closer, people fixating on something happening.

"The concern that I have is that wacko goofballs with dirty bombs or something like that are going to choose that date to pull the lever or something like that, having their own agenda of terrorism or whatever, so that it will become sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy for insane people with weapons to do their deed, coordinated with what they perceive to be the foretold date of destruction," Jenkins said.