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Were the Mayans right about 2012?

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Yes
24% 106 votes Total: 447 votes
No
76% 341 votes

Yes

by Author Name Withheld 126

Created on: March 08, 2010   Last Updated: August 12, 2010

There is very little doubt that the Mayans were right in their predictions. They had excellent knowledge of planetary movement and galactic alignments. It is possible that they even had a greater understanding of some concepts than our modern science, but that is not of the most importance in this matter. What is relevant is that the Mayan calendar is not prophecy.

Clearly, there was no image sent divinely down to the Mayans. No mystical being is claimed to have brought such information as a warning. We see such things because we try to understand the Mayan calendar through our concept of religion. The best way to understand the Mayan calendar is by viewing our own equivalent calendar.

Upon opening a modern calendar there are many predictions. The cycles of the moon are presented in most versions. With complete accuracy, every phase of the moon is displayed months in advance. Does this mean that we have some prophetic insight into the future? It does not; further, no such claim is being made. These recordings are made simply as information with no religious significance.

In our calendar, we go on to predict seasons throughout the year. A year in advance, we know when cycles of the sun, harvests, and even hindering things such as snow will occur. We know these things simply from experience. Even without the aid of elders, most of us have lived long enough to have witnessed the passing of other cycles that confirm our beliefs.

Another similarity that goes unnoticed is that we also make other predictions. On such recordings, there is a knowledge that certain moods will influence certain times of year. We predict and facilitate that harvests will be celebrated, solstices rejoiced, or summer embraced. There are no skeptics wondering where we came to know how people might react and feel during these periods of the year.

Is it really that hard to accept that the Mayans also understood cycles of life? Because of a dark age, wars, and over events, there is little in the way of long term record in modern times. That does not mean that the Mayans did not not have a much wider reaching oral record from visitors and citizens. Before the fall of Alexandrian culture, many civilizations had vast recordings. This is proven in the extensive stores of information that found a home in Alexandria.

There should really be no argument that the Mayans likely understood many things that would come with much longer cycles than we currently understand. The real question of debate is what happens in 2012. That question can very easily be answered. What happens at midnight on December 31rst? Did we choose to end our own calendar there because we expect the world to end each year? Instead, it seems that this is simply where we divide one cycle from the next.

Many similarities exist between these two calendars. December marks the height of short days and the beginning of the journey to summer. The Mayan calendar ends as we cross a galactic divide in a much larger cycle. As it is our darkest time of the year, they view the divide as a dark time for civilizations. So many similarities, yet how do we react to our own predictions?

In many cases, we come together in the darkest part of the year. We control the circumstance by uniting and helping each other through. As the new year turns over, we look forward to the future and imagine a better world ahead. The only ones who can fulfill horrific predictions are the ones who created those predictions.

It is us and not the Maya who place such significance on this one small part of their calendar. As all in faith should be warned, we should be careful that we do not create self-fulfilling predictions with our own attitudes and apathy in seeking an end.

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No

by Travis Deal

Created on: April 26, 2010   Last Updated: April 28, 2010

I suppose the simplest and most agreeable answer to that question is no, because 2012 hasn't happened yet. I know, that's sarcastic of me to say, but it is true. We will not and cannot know for sure if the Mayans got it right until that ever looming date of December 21, 2012 is upon us.  

But, let me explain why I believe that it is possible to venture a guess as to why they will be and are wrong. First, a quick glance at the world of the typical Mayan in their time. This was a time when houses were made from straw and mud, when running water was something that involved a considerably lengthy hike to attain (unless, of course, you lived next to a river and then all you had to worry about were the chemicals that seeped into the river from the people who had been ritualistically sacrificed that morning), and a time when things like beans were the principle form of currency. This was a people who believed that the giant ball of fire in the sky (the Sun) was a vengeful god who killed without hesitation. I'm not blaming them for this of course. After all, they didn't know any better.

Even the Greeks had a similar system of gods to help explain natural forces, and we consider them to be one the most advanced civilizations in our history. But, the point remains. Should a prediction, thousands of years into the future, by a culture of people such as the Mayans really be taken seriously? The answer is no, by the way.

I've heard the argument that the Mayans were capable astronomers, well versed in the ways of the Universe and our solar system. Really? Copernicus was a Fifteenth century astronomer in a time when such a science existed and even he was considered crazy, and he at least had a telescope.

Even today, with all of our newfangled technology and math and such, we still don't know everything there is to know about the Universe. But, according to Astrophysicists like Neil deGrasse Tyson, they are certain that 2012 will pass just like any other year because the event predicted by the Mayans actually happens every year. I just cannot reconcile in my mind the idea that a civilization that existed centuries before ours would be able to predict such an event based on, what, a hunch? Also, as one of my favorite journalists happened to point out, it seems a little unlikely that the Mayans would have had the forethought to predict the end of the world in a few thousand years, but that that whole utter massacre of their people by the Spanish was beyond their psychic abilities.

I feel like an event of that scope would have been much easier, if not more relevant, to predict. Or maybe they did predict it and just thought the likelihood wasn't high enough to warrant mention. We may never know. That's the funny thing about predictions. They are really hard to do. Actually, scratch that. They are actually really easy to do. It's the being right part that's really hard.

Nostradamus was really the only one in history who seems to have had a knack for it, and even he wrote mostly vague and generalized statements that could be interpreted any number of ways. So, the idea that the Mayans could make such a specific prediction, with the precise date and year, is even harder to swallow. Just look at our modern day meteorologists. Their job, what they went to school for and get paid to do, is to make predictions. When was the last time you heard a weather forecast and believed it wholeheartedly and with absolute conviction. I have a feeling that answer would hover somewhere in the area of never, and that's the same attitude we should take with the Mayan's 2012 prediction. 

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