New Maya Discovery Casts Doubt on World's Imminent Demise

[theultimateend]

You mean the world really isn't going to end?

When did we start trusting the predictions of ancient civilisations anyway?

Around the same people got their life guidance by books written by them.

So quite some time.

 

[lacktheknack]

You mean the world really isn't going to end?

When did we start trusting the predictions of ancient civilisations anyway?

Even Sketch-Of-Nicolas-Cage-Performing-Best-Monologue-In-Cinema is jovial and non-chalant in his dismissal of the 2012 apocalypse. That's gotta burn the naysayers REEEAL good.

 

[jurnag12]

What, new discoveries cast doubt on the World's imminent demise?
Didn't common sense already kick it in the jimmies the second that some idiot started blathering about it?
I mean, come on, even the current Mayan priests are saying that the end of the calendar doesn't equal the end of the world, and people are still going apeshit over it?
I'm almost hoping for an actual extinction level-event to happen so our entire damn species can stop being so mind-numbingly stupid at times.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Good, now the whole "theory" has been disproven beyond any shadow of a doubt and everyone can shut up about it forever.

[small]Seriously. It's gone beyond even remotely funny or interesting. THE MAYANS THEMSELVES discredited the whole thing.[/small]

 

[SlaveNumber23]

Like there wasn't huge amounts of doubt already? Come on, even if the Mayans really did predict the world would end at the end of this year, why would they have any credibility with that prediction at all?

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

Guys, I'm an ancient Mayan come to the future to warn you!
The Apocalypse won't happen in 2012.... it already happened back in my time! That's why we never finished the calendar, the world ended before we could. I managed to escape to the future, but just barely...


-----

Solve Media:
"chuck norris"

Noooooo, Solve Media! Sayeth not the name of the great destroyer, lest he rain down apocalypse upon civilisation once more!!!
(*runs to time machine and escapes further into the future*)

 

[Akytalusia]

obviousness of the results aside; doesn't anyone else find the timing of this [discovery] suspiciously convenient?

 

[littlewisp]

good stuff

Good post. I'd heard it explained before how the leap years didn't affect the calculations, but not enough to put it into a good post like you did.

Overall, I wonder what people who prepare for/believe in the end of the world would do if they discovered they only had x time left to live. Would they act the same?

 

[Pharsalus]

Maaaan, cop out city.

 

[Gennadios]

Ah damn. 7,000 more years of this BS? Cruel universe.

 

[PinkiePyro]

***** please we all know the world is gonna end becuse snooki is gonna give birth to the
anti-Christ

 

[Vault boy Eddie]

That's a damn shame, I was looking forward to huge groups of simpletons killing themselves for the betterment of mankind.

 

[R Man]

I'd like to point out that the Maya did, in fact, know about the leap year. What exactly they did about it on the other hand is a mystery.

The real irony is that 2012 is completely arbitrary. When the Mayans were initially making their calendar they figured out that the earth was really old. So they just picked a random day in 3114 BC and went from there. The day the calendar ends is completely random, and the Maya knew it.

 

[BrownGaijin]

ACKOP: See Mayans! You prediction for the end of the world contradicts this! Don't you feel stupid?!

Modern Day Mayans: But we never said that the world was going to end in the first place. That was made by New-Age crackpots.

ACKOP: But didn't you start this scam to make money?!

MDM: Look around, does it look like a drive in a Benz? We have no water and my children go hungry.

Child: Chicle senor?

So yeah, don't hate on the Mayans too much.

 

[the abyss gazes also]

As with any belief that is held in spite of evidence to the contrary, anyone who already thinks the world is going to end on any given day because the Mayan calendar, their preacher, or the flying spaghetti monster told them will not let any evidence dissuade them. How about we all make a deal and stop believing in a predetermined or prophesied end of the world.

Given the total nuclear arsenals of various nations and the shooting gallery that is our astroid filled universe the chances of the world ending are not zero, but I doubt someone several thousand years ago was able to figure out the date. How many times has some whack job said the world would end on such and such a date? How many times has the world not ended?

 

[Farther than stars]

When did we start trusting the predictions of ancient civilisations anyway?

Actually we didn't. It's a misunderstanding that people have that the Mayans 'thought' the world was going to end in 2012, when in actual fact they didn't think this would happen. The actual truth is that this year marks the end of one of their units of time (2880000 days). It's kinda like the turn of the millenium for the Mayans, except that their particular time unit is roughly 8 millenia long. In a way people thinking that the world is going to end is a lot like the Y2K scare that went around in 1999.

 

[Farther than stars]

I'd like to point out that the Maya did, in fact, know about the leap year. What exactly they did about it on the other hand is a mystery.

The real irony is that 2012 is completely arbitrary. When the Mayans were initially making their calendar they figured out that the earth was really old. So they just picked a random day in 3114 BC and went from there. The day the calendar ends is completely random, and the Maya knew it.

Actually, the Mayan 'year' is roughly five days shorter than our modern calendar year, being 360 days for mathematical consistency. The Mayans strived to form the perfect calendar by association days not only with the Sun, but also positioning of the stars, comets, etc. With that in mind, accounting for something like a leap day would only mess up their mathematical axioms anyway, so they didn't incorporate any.
What's more, their calendar ends roughly 63 million years from now anyway and even then you could still go on counting their greatest unit of time (that 63 million solar years), like we do with our own years.

 

[DracoSuave]

The fact that some people need evidence to put the end of the 2012 world into doubt is, in itself, horrifying.

Technically, the Mayan calendar didn't actually end.

From what I understand, the Maya believed time was cyclical, and marked by a "galactic cycle", which starts and ends when the progression of the equinoxes makes a complete revolution. In other words, when the Earth, Sun and galactic core are all in perfect alignment, which happens approximately once every 26,000 years.

The Mayan calendar for this cycle ends 12/21/2012, but then it starts right back up again in the new cycle. Basically, the Mayan used the progression of the equinoxes as a (significantly) larger version of a year. All this hysteria about it is functionally equivalent to our descendants finding the gregorian calendar and being convinced Dec 31 of any given year is the last day of all time.

This.

NO Mayan archaeologist or historian has ever unearth evidence that the mayans believed the world would end at the ending of a cycle. Not a SINGLE shred of evidence has been unearthed suggesting this belief.

There is no evidence put forth to suggest any reasonable opinion that the mayans professed the end of the world on ANY date.

It's not merely ignorant to believe the mayans had the ability to predict the end; it's ignorant to believe the mayans believed they could.