Twenty twelve is set to be a momentous time, the first winter youth Olympics is going to be held in January, the US are going to have a presidential election and the United Kingdom are going to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth. But if you're looking towards 2013 you should not get your hopes up, because according to some predictions, the entire world is due to end on December 21. For those who delight in Christmas, make the most of this season and the next, since according to the Mayan calendar, they'll be your last. Potentially.
Well before Europeans showed up in meso America the populace employed an elaborate mixture of calendars to record their days. The Haab or solar calendar, both a timepiece and Mayan art form, was comprised of eighteen 20 day months plus a time period of 5 days called Wayeb to bring the total to 365.
The Tzolkin however was a cycle of 260 days, thirteen multiplied by twenty. No-one is aware quite the reason 260 days were picked, however it appears the numbers 13 and 20 were each important to these early civilizations. There is a likelihood that it is based on the time in between a woman's first missed period and the birth of her child, and made it easier to estimate when a infant might be born, however other hypotheses about crop harvesting and astrology findings might be equally accurate. Nearly all dates could possibly be established by a combination of the Haab and Tzolin, the period would come together one time every fifty-two years, that is roughly once in every generation.
To look at intervals for a longer period than 52 years the Mayans applied a different technique which we now call the Long Count calendar. This system is shown in both Olmec and Aztec art and wasn't introduced by the Maya. Dates run forwards from a mythic day zero, the particular date of the introduction of the current world. Just like all civilizations the base units were days, with twenty days in the uinal and 18 uinals in the tun (more or less a year). A K'atun contains twenty tuns and 20 of those a b'ak'tun. Once more the number 13 is significant and quite a few inscriptions in Mayan artwork show the date changing at the conclusion of 13 b'ak'tuns and spoke of incidents that occur on this particular date. This resulted in a belief that the Mayans anticipated something important to occur around the final day of the 13th B'ak'tun. That day is actually calculated to be 21st or 23 December 2012. So what might we expect?
Well according to many scholars nothing at all. There are some references to something taking place about that time frame in inscriptions, but nothing really concrete, so it is really surprising just how much fuss 2012 seems to be generating. Many state there may a religious evolution, while others talk about a momentous galactic alignment, though this is based on the positioning of the galactic equator, which cannot be identified, this does not seem extremely probable. But other people are worried about planet Niburu.
Collision with planet X (or Niburu) has been predicted since the year 2003, however any planet near enough to be within collision with the Earth in 2012 would now be obviously visible to astronomers in the evening sky. Sadly this fictional collision has become confused in the media with the actual and expected approach of a giant asteroid known as Eros that is expected to pass the earth in 2012. Eros is larger than the asteroid that we think killed the dinosaurs 65 millions years back but since it won't ever be closer than 70 times the distance from the moon, it is not likely to do any damage.
Looking at the Mayan calendar is a great reason to consider how we measure time and the reason why, to understand the solar cycles that still rule our existence and also to enjoy the fine art of an intriguing civilization. As to planning for the end of the world, that still looks just a little premature.
