21 Dec 2012

We’ve been waiting forever…

A major motion picture. A major TV series. A best-selling series of children’s books.

All about one, mysterious calendar date - 21 December 2012.*

2012 fever has started to hit the world..and it’s still a few years to go before the date the ancient Mayans knew as THIRTEEN BAKTUN.

Where did all this come from? Is there any truth in the stories we’re hearing? Is the world really going to end in 2012?

Photo by frankdasilva used under Creative Commons license. “The Crop Circle formation at Avebury Manor seems to depict our solar-system (not in proportional scale) on December 21, (+/-) 2012 - the highly debated end of the Mayan calendar.”

The Fact and Fiction of 2012

The ancient Mayan civilisation existed in countries we now call Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. Between 500-900 A.D. they enjoyed a ‘golden age’ of city-building and writing. Theirs was a complex, highly structured society, one of the most technologically developed civilisations in the world at the time.

Mayan astronomers made remarkably accurate observations and used their Long Count calendar to commemorate historical and astronomical events.

Like the Gregorian and Julian calendars which start with the presumed date of Jesus of Nazareth’s birth, the Long Count Calendar (the Haab) has a start date.

Unlike those calendars however, the Long Count Calendar (Haab) also has an end date.

The Haab start date is August 11 3114 BC

The end date of the Haab is thirteen baktuns later…which translates as 21 Dec 2012.

If the start of a calendar commemorates the most important event a society can remember - what would the end date of a calendar commemorate?

Could it be the date of the end? Or perhaps of a new beginning?

On Mayan Mysteries of 2012 we’ll be looking at the ancient Maya, what they wrote about 2012, what other people have written or said about 2012. We’ll also look at some of the entertainments based around this mystery.

Including the thrilling Joshua Files…

* 21 December 2012 is the most commonly used translation of the Mayan date THIRTEEN BAKTUN. But comparing dates in the two calendar systems - Gregorian vs Mayan is sometimes a bit slippy. 13 Baktun has also been translated as 23 December 2012. In The Joshua Files the date used is 22 December 2012, just to be different…