New Data Contradicts Mayan Calendar End Date

The Mayan Long Count calendar likely doesn’t end on December 21, 2012  ~ the date hyped by many apocalyptic thinkers ~ according to new research into the technique for translating the ancient calendar into Gregorian calendar years.

The research also contends that the actual end date of the Mayan calendar is essentially unknown within at least a 100-year span. In fact, the Mayan calendar may have already ended.

According to LiveScience:

A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and overhyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, much as our year ends on Dec. 31.) 

The Mayan calendar was converted to today's Gregorian calendar using a calculation called the GMT constant, named for the last initials of three early Mayanist researchers. Much of the work emphasized dates recovered from colonial documents that were written in the Mayan language in the Latin alphabet, according to the chapter's author, Gerardo Aldana, professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California.

Later, the GMT constant was bolstered by American linguist and anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury, who used data in the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a Mayan calendar and almanac that charts dates relative to the movements of Venus.

"He took the position that his work removed the last obstacle to fully accepting the GMT constant," Aldana said in a statement. "Others took his work even further, suggesting that he had proven the GMT constant to be correct." But according to Aldana, Lounsbury's evidence is far from irrefutable.

Click here for the complete article.

2012 ~ Epicenter of a Cultural Earthquake

Anyone following my Quantum Spirit blog for any length of time probably knows I have great respect for author and physicist Peter Russell. Here is his take on 2012, entitled "2012: Temporal Epicenter of a Cultural Earthquake."

I encourage you to view it for its profound insights into taking advantage of the changes that may already be entering our lives.

The script for his video appears on his blog "Spirit of Now." Here are the concluding paragraphs.

People sometimes talk about the winds of change. I think we’re heading into a storm of change. The question is how can we prepare ourselves for this, how can we cope with an increasingly unpredictable world?

We can get some clues by looking at what helps a tree survive a storm. 

First, it needs strong roots, so it does not blow over. Similarly, we need to be able to remain stable so that we are not shaken by every unexpected change. If we loose our inner balance, if we react emotionally to everything that happens, we end up getting more stressed and more likely to burn out.

Second, like a tree we also need to be flexible. We need to be able to move with the flow of change. This means letting go of past assumptions. We need to learn to think more clearly, allow new ideas in, let deeper intuitions and feelings come to the surface.

And third, just as a tree is much better off if it is protected by other trees in the forest, so too we will be much better able to withstand change if we have a strong sense of community. We need to care for each, support each other in times of need. We need to develop greater care and compassion, to open our hearts to kindness, and have our vision guide us in these turbulent times.

A longtime advocate of meditation and consciousness studies, Russell is author of several books including From Science to God, Waking Up in Time, The Consciousness Revolution, and The Brain Book, among others.

2012: And So the Hysteria Begins

Conceptual artwork by Barbara McGunigal.

The countdown has 38 months left until December 21, 2012, and already low-grade hysteria about the end of the world is occurring. According to the Associated Press in a 2012 status report:

At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" website, says people are scared.

"It's too bad that we're getting emails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."

Triggering this unfortunate example, of course, is the ancient Mayan calendar, which already is the source of considerable debate.

The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy. Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.

"It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. "The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six."

For the blissfully ignorant, Monument Six is a stone tablet found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s. Parts of the tablet were stolen upon its discovery, but the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.

The Associated Press article recites some of the arguments from believers and non-believers and is just a hint of what we can expect from the media over the next three years. I’d say the kickoff for the real hysteria will be the opening next month of the movie “2012,” with its incredible special effects depicting earthquakes, meteor showers and a killer tsunami.

Click here for the Associated Press article.

Click here for a “Year 2012” blog with lots of links.

Click here for more artwork by Barbara McGunigal.

You Can't Escape 2012 (the movie, that is)

A page from Sony's "2012" website about the IHC.

The commercialization of The End of the World is starting to heat up. Beginning this fall, I’m certain our television viewing will be peppered with graphic representations of tsunamis, earthquakes, colliding planets and all sort of apocalyptic scenarios ~ all courtesy of Sony Pictures.

There’ll simply be no excuse for not being aware that we all have only three more years to live.

Sony’s big movie “2012” ~ ostensibly about a researcher leading people in a battle against such events, directed by Roland Emmerich and starring John Cusack ~ is due out November 13.

Taking a lead from the ABC hit series “Lost,” Sony’s “2012” website features a fictitious scholarly organization called the Institute for Human Continuity (IHC), complete with mission statement, press releases, and made-up history.

“The Institute for Human Continuity is dedicated to scientific research and public preparedness. After more than two decades of rigorous research from the world’s top astronomers, mathematicians, geologists, physicists, anthropologists, engineers, futurists … we know in 2012 a series of cataclysmic forces will wreak havoc on our planet. The IHC has developed a number of initiatives to prepare the world for this inevitability.”

These “initiatives” include a lottery to win a place in an apocalypse-proof bunker or something of that sort.

As an offshoot of the movie's promotion, Woody Harrelson, one of the actors in “2012,” is starring in a series of of YouTube videos as Charlie Frost, commenting on the end of the world. According to the Great Ads blog: “The promo video was released on YouTube and had over a million views in just the first day ~ now that’s how you create a buzz, friends.”

Here’s one of my favorite Charlie Frost videos so far …

Some Calmer Voices Regarding 2012

Predictions of calamity in 2012 continue to broaden commercially, with more television shows and more new books dedicated to the apocalyptic prognostications rooted in the Mayan Long Count Calendar. After all, fear always has been good for business.

A recent article in the Houston Chronicle did a good job of capturing the controversy, especially interviewing some scholars and historians who tend to disavow the potential of apocalypse:

Most scholars discount the apocalyptic interpretation of the date. Indeed, Mayan prophecy about 2012 is hard to trace because evidence from original sources is limited. It exists in fragments and is often contradictory, said Mark Van Stone, an art history professor at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, Calif., and an expert on Mayan hieroglyphics. But Stone is convinced the Mayas did not consider 12/21/12 the end of time. “Nearly everything we read about 2012 is modern people projecting on the Maya their fantasies,” he said.

And:

The date Dec. 21, 2012, is important to the Maya in the way New Year’s Eve might be important to a reveler, said Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Florida. “It is not a doomsday; it is a party,” she said.

Of course the doomsday predictors have their say in the article as well ~ as they will for the next three years and seven months.

Click here for the Houston Chronicle article.

NASA Sees Potential Solar Problems in 2012

A group of NASA researchers have added startling reinforcement to the gathering concerns about the year 2012. In a report entitled Severe Space Weather Events: Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts, they describe consequences of solar flares unleashing waves of energy capable of disrupting Earth’s magnetic field, overwhelming high-voltage transformers with vast electrical currents and short-circuiting the planet’s energy grids.

According to the report, the next period of intense solar activity is expected in 2012, and coincides with the presence of an unusually large hole in Earth’s geomagnetic shield. But, according to Wired magazine, the report has received relatively little attention, perhaps because of 2012’s supernatural connotations. Mayan astronomers supposedly predicted that 2012 would mark the calamitous "birth of a new era."

Whether the Mayans were on to something won’t be known for several years. But Lawrence Joseph, author of Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization’s End, told Wired magazine: "I’ve been following this topic for almost five years, and it wasn’t until the report came out that this really began to freak me out."

Click here for the complete Wired article.
Click here to purchase a copy of the Severe Space Weather Events report.