Thoughts on 2012

[Ponguin]

I just had a thought,(rare for me, I know). I think it's possible that the Mayans tricked us humans into believing that the world will end during 2012, and what people believe in can happens, so it may ultimately fulfill the end of the calender. Does that make sense?

I'm not entirely sure about this, but it is possible. Just a thought for those believers in 2012.

Btw, I seem to think of more possibilities and things that may happen when I am tired, which is how I thought up this interesting thought. My mind seems to open up more when I feel like going to sleep. I know this is going off topic, but does anyone know why?

-Luke

[Stillwater]

Well... I think people put a lot of words into the Mayans' mouths, haha. They never said the world would end in 2012. They never said anything about 2012 at all, since they did not use our calender system. If I recall, they were one of those groups that had a solar and a lunar calender, and a cycle relating they two. The Mayans understood a certain fact about astronomy, namely that the equinoxes occur on slightly different days over the years, in a cycle over thousands of years, despite the fact that they were only around for a few hundred years; they based one of their calender cycles around this "precession of the equinoxes", and marked the ends of each cycle as their "long count" system.

So that is what the Mayans said- that in their system of reckoning time, a major cycle will have been completed, based on the precession of the equinoxes, similarly to way in which a year, or a century is a sort of cycle that is meaningful to our system.  Now there is scholarly disagreement about the date in our calender that corresponds to the end of the current Mayan long count, so no one knows for sure what date it really represents; hence they Mayans made no comment about 2012. In reality, some people think the corresponding Gregorian date is over a hundred years away.

It is true that the Mayans did place significance on the beginings and ends of their calender cycles, but I don't think they predicted any "end of the world" scenarios. I think what is closer to the Mayan lore is that years within the same particular cycle had a sort of "thematic" relationship, and that when the cycles changed, there would be gradual change to the world as well, refelcting the change of the cycle.

[Timandra]

Last week I read in an interview in the paper about an old Mayan man who said we were already dead 10 years but didn't realise it yet... 

Btw, I seem to think of more possibilities and things that may happen when I am tired, which is how I thought up this interesting thought. My mind seems to open up more when I feel like going to sleep. I know this is going off topic, but does anyone know why?

Perhaps you'd better start a new topic with this question, because it gets a bit lost in here. 

[NoY]

the clock reaches 12 every night and its not the end of time is it. its followed by a new cycle


:NoY:

[kailaurius]

What kind of world do you want to experience?  What would you like to see at this very moment right now?

[sgalover89142]

With all the hype surrounding 2012, I might be just a little disappointed if nothing happens 

[testing]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9xiiTE3gAQ

[CFTraveler]

With all the hype surrounding 2012, I might be just a little disappointed if nothing happens 

Were you dissapointed when Y2K fizzled out, and when in 2003 planet x didn't appear?

[personalreality]

this isn't necessarily related specifically to the Mayans, but I've been reading a lot about archaeology lately, particularly the evidence for ancient civilizations here on earth (which really ought to be recognized as fact.  the amount of evidence is astonishing.).  One of the things that become apparent is that something happened that severely altered the climate on earth and brought about the downfall of this ancient (probably global) civilization.  Some people believe that the great monuments around the world are in some sense a warning.  Not a "oh my god the world is gonna end" warning, but rather a sober display of principles and understandings put forth by these ancient cultures or their descendants that survived the cataclysm.  When viewed together, some people believe that these things left behind will show a pattern of catastrophe on this planet (which isn't a highly accepted theory because it doesn't follow the uniformitarianism that the orthodox accepts as fact, that our lives are 100% stable and everything we know started simple and slowly over long periods of time have grown into what we know today).  Most importantly, these messages were intentionally left behind to show future generations about the natural cycles that effect this planet, whether they be purely planetary, born of the whole solar system, galactic in nature, or even something beyond our comprehension.  The fact of the matter is, our history on this planet before 3000BC is pretty much an unknown, but the wealth of evidence points to cataclysm, something intense that buried the civilization that once lived here.  Was it just a random comet or meteor that won't threaten us again for 1000's of years?  Or was it something that will happen again and sooner than later?  That's the real question.  

[sgalover89142]

Were you dissapointed when Y2K fizzled out, and when in 2003 planet x didn't appear?

I was 10 when y2k was and then 13 for the other. I just now started to get into more spiritual things and such, back then I was honestly more concerned with my cloths and what not. And it really was more of a joke than anything else. I really don't think anything bad is going to happen at all.

[Stillwater]

this isn't necessarily related specifically to the Mayans, but I've been reading a lot about archaeology lately, particularly the evidence for ancient civilizations here on earth (which really ought to be recognized as fact.  the amount of evidence is astonishing.).  One of the things that become apparent is that something happened that severely altered the climate on earth and brought about the downfall of this ancient (probably global) civilization.  Some people believe that the great monuments around the world are in some sense a warning.

That is interesting PR- which particular monuments or artifacts are being cited as evidence for this claim? Elaborate a bit.

I do know that there are a few examples of things in far-strewn places that by all accounts of accepted history should not exist. For instance, this topic I made a time ago describes the site of Puma Punku, which is attributed to Neolithic-age people, yet contains diorite stones of such mass that the only way our civilization could move them today would be oceanic freighter, and cuts and holes of such precision they would demand diamond tools or industrial lasers to create.

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_news_and_media/1000000_lb_stone_moved_by_ancient_south_americans_20000_years_ago-t29441.0.html