December 2012 marks the ending of the current
b'ak'tun cycle of the
Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, which was used in
Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Though the Long Count was most likely invented by the
Olmec,
[8] it has become closely associated with the
Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD.
[9] The
writing system of the classic Maya has been substantially deciphered, meaning that a corpus of their written and inscribed material has survived from before the European conquest.
The Long Count set its "zero date" at a point in the past marking the end of the previous world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to either 11 or 13 August 3114 BC in the
Proleptic Gregorian calendar, depending on the formula used.
[10] Unlike the 52-year
calendar round still used today among the Maya, the Long Count was linear, rather than cyclical, and kept time roughly in units of 20, so 20 days made a uinal, 18 uinals (360 days) made a tun, 20 tuns made a k'atun, and 20 k'atuns (144,000 days) made up a b'ak'tun. So, for example, the Mayan date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 b'ak'tuns, 3 k'atuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days since creation. Many Mayan inscriptions have the count shifting to a higher order after 13 b'ak'tuns, or roughly 5,125 years.
[11][12] Today, the most widely accepted correlation of the end of the thirteenth b'ak'tun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, with the Western calendar is December 21, 2012,
[1] with December 23 remaining another option.[
page needed]
In 1957, the early Mayanist and astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson wrote that "the completion of a Great Period of 13 b'ak'tuns would have been of the utmost significance to the Maya".
[13] The anthropologist
Munro S. Edmonson added that "there appears to be a strong likelihood that the eral calendar, like the year calendar, was motivated by a long-range astronomical prediction, one that made a correct solsticial forecast 2,367 years into the future in 355 B.C." (sic)
[14] In 1966,
Michael D. Coe more ambitiously asserted in The Maya that "there is a suggestion ... that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the thirteenth [b'ak'tun]. Thus ... our present universe [would] be annihilated [in December 2012]
[a] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion."
[15]Coe's apocalyptic connotations were accepted by other scholars through the early 1990s.
[16] In contrast, later researchers said that, while the end of the 13th b'ak'tun would perhaps be a cause for celebration,
[3] it did not mark the end of the calendar.
[17] "There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012," says Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone, "The notion of a "Great Cycle" coming to an end is completely a modern invention."
[18] In their seminal work of 1990, the Maya scholars
Linda Schele and
David Freidel, who reference Edmonson, argue that the Maya "did not conceive this to be the end of creation, as many have suggested,"
[19] citing Mayan predictions of events to occur after the end of the 13th b'ak'tun. Stela 1 at
Coba, for example, gives a date with twenty units above the b'ak'tun, placing it either 4.134105 × 1028 years in the future,
[19] or an equal distance in the past.
[20] Either way, this date is 3
quintillion times the
age of the universe, demonstrating that not all Mayans considered the 5,125-year cycle as the most important. In fact, many different Maya city-states employed the Long Count in different ways. At
Palenque, evidence suggests that the priest timekeepers believed the cycle would end after 20 b'ak'tuns, rather than 13. A monument commemorating the ascension of the king
Pakal the Great connects his coronation with events as much as 4000 years after, indicating that those scribes did not believe the world would end on 13.0.0.0.0.
[21]Maya references to B'ak'tun 13
The present-day Maya, as a whole, do not attach much significance to b'ak'tun 13. Although the calendar round is still used by some Maya tribes in the Guatemalan highlands, the Long Count was employed exclusively by the classic Maya, and was only recently rediscovered by archaeologists.
[22] Mayan elder Apolinario Chile Pixtun and Mexican archaeologist Guillermo Bernal both note that "apocalypse" is a Western concept that has little or nothing to do with Mayan beliefs. Bernal believes that such ideas have been foisted on the Maya by Westerners because their own myths are "exhausted".
[23][24] Archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni says that while the idea of "balancing the cosmos" was prominent in ancient Maya literature, and some modern Maya affirm this idea of an age of coexistence, the 2012 phenomenon does not present this message in its original form. Instead, it is bound up with American traditions such as the
New Age movement,
millenarianism, and the belief in
secret knowledge from distant times and places.
[25] Mayan archaeologist Jose Huchm has stated that "If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn't have any idea. That the world is going to end? They wouldn't believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain".
[23]What significance the classic Maya gave b'ak'tun 13 is uncertain. Most classic Maya inscriptions are strictly historical and do not make any prophetic declarations.
[26] Two items in the Maya historical corpus, however, mention the end of the 13th b'ak'tun:
Tortuguero Monument 6 and, possibly, the
Chilam Balam.
Tortuguero
The
Tortuguero site, which lies in southernmost
Tabasco, Mexico, dates from the 7th century AD and consists of a series of inscriptions in honor of the contemporary ruler. One inscription, known as Tortuguero Monument 6, is generally agreed among Mayanists to refer to b'ak'tun 13. It has been partially defaced; Mark Van Stone has given the most complete translation:
Tzuhtz-(a)j-oom u(y)-uxlajuun pik
The Thirteenth [b'ak'tun] will end
(ta) Chan Ajaw ux(-te') Uniiw.
(on) 4 Ajaw, the 3rd of Uniiw [3 K'ank'in].
Uht-oom Ek'-...
Black ... will occur.
Y-em(al) ... Bolon Yookte' K'uh ta-chak-ma...
(It will be) the descent(?) of Bolon Yookte' K'uh to the great (or red?)...
[21]Very little is known about the god (or gods) Bolon Yookte' K'uh. Possible translations of his or their name include "nine support [gods]", "Many‐Strides God", "Nine‐Dog Tree", or "Many‐Root Tree".
[21] He appears in other inscriptions as a god of war, conflict, and the underworld, though Markus Eberl and Christian Prager believe that the Tortuguero inscription parallels the typical Maya ruler's pronouncement of a future dedicatory celebration.
[27] No illustrations of Bolon Yookte' exist, though dozens of other gods' images are known.
[21]Chilam Balam
The
Chilam Balam are a group of post-conquest Mayan prophetic histories transcribed in a modified form of the Spanish alphabet. Their authorship is ascribed to a chilam balam, or jaguar prophet.
[28] The Chilam Balam of
Tizimin has been translated four times in the 20th century, with many disputes over the meaning of its passages. One passage in particular is relevant to the interpretation of the 13th b'ak'tun:
lic u tal oxlahun bak chem, ti u cenic u (tzan a cen/ba nacom)i (ciac/cha') a ba yum(il/t)exe
Maud Worcester Makemson, an archaeoastronomer, believed that this line referred to the "tremendously important event of the arrival of 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 Kankin in the not too distant future",
[29] Her translation of the line, runs:
Presently B'ak'tun 13 shall come sailing, figuratively speaking, bringing the ornaments of which I have spoken from your ancestors.
Her version of the text continues, "Then the god will come to visit his little ones. Perhaps 'After Death' will be the subject of his discourse." Makemson was still relying on her own dating of 13.0.0.0.0 to 1752 and therefore the "not too distant future" in her annotations meant a few years after the scribe in Tizimin recorded his Chilam Balam.
[30] The more recent translation of Munro S. Edmonson does not support this reading; he considers the Long Count almost entirely absent from the book, since the 360-day tun been supplanted in the 1750s by a 365-day Christian year, and a 24-round may system was being implemented.
[31] He translates the line as follows:
...like the coming of 13 sail-ships. When the captains dress themselves, your fathers will be taken.
[32]Other Chilam Balam books contain references to the 13th b'ak'tun, but it is unclear if these are in the past or future; for example, oxhun bakam u katunil (thirteen bakam of k'atuns) in the Chilam Balam of
Chumayel.
[33]New Age beliefs
Many New Age thinkers believe that the ending of this cycle will correspond to a global "consciousness shift". Established themes found in 2012 literature include "suspicion towards mainstream Western culture", the idea of spiritual evolution, and the possibility of leading the world into the New Age, by individual example or by a group's joined consciousness. The general intent of this literature is not to warn of impending doom but "to foster counter-cultural sympathies and eventually socio-political and 'spiritual' activism".
[2] Aveni, who has studied New Age and
SETI communities, describes 2012 narratives as the product of a "disconnected" society: "Unable to find spiritual answers to life's big questions within ourselves, we turn outward to imagined entities that lie far off in space or time—entities that just might be in possession of superior knowledge."
[34]In 1975, b'ak'tun 13 became the subject of speculation by several New Age authors. In his book Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth Age of Consciousness,
Frank Waters tied Coe's December 24, 2011 date to astrology and the prophecies of the
Hopi,
[35] while both
José Argüelles and
Terence McKenna (in their books The Transformative Vision
[36] and The Invisible Landscape
[37][38] respectively) discussed the significance of the year 2012, but not a specific day. In 1987, the year in which he held the
Harmonic Convergence event, Arguelles settled on the date of December 21 in his book The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology,
[39][40] in which he claimed on that date the Earth would pass through a great "beam" from the centre of the Galaxy, and that the Maya aligned their calendar in anticipation of that event.
[41]Galactic alignment
In the mid-1990s,
John Major Jenkins asserted that the ancient Maya intended to tie the end of their calendar to the winter
solstice in 2012, which falls on December 21. This date was in line with an idea he terms the galactic alignment.
[42]In the
Solar System, the planets and the
Sun share roughly the same plane of orbit, known as the
plane of the ecliptic. From our perspective on
Earth, the ecliptic is the path taken by the Sun across the sky over the course of the year. The 12 constellations which line the ecliptic are known as the
zodiac and, through the year, the Sun passes through each constellation in turn. Additionally, over time, the Sun's annual passage appears to recede counterclockwise by one degree every 72 years.
This movement is attributed to a slight wobble in the Earth's axis as it spins.
[43] As a result, approximately every 2160 years, the constellation visible on the early morning of the spring
equinox changes. In Western astrological traditions, this signals the end of one
astrological age (currently the Age of Pisces) and the beginning of another (
Age of Aquarius). Over the course of 26,000 years, the
precession of the equinoxes makes one full circuit around the ecliptic.
[43]Just as the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere is currently in the constellation of
Pisces, so the winter solstice is currently in the constellation of
Sagittarius, which is the zodiacal constellation intersected by the
galactic equator.
[44] Every year for the last 1000 years or so, on the winter solstice, the Earth, Sun and the galactic equator come into alignment, and every year, precession pushes the Sun's position a little way further through the
Milky Way's band.
The
Milky Way near
Cygnus showing the lane of the
Dark Rift, which the
Maya called the Xibalba be or "Black Road"
Jenkins suggests that the
Maya based their calendar on observations of the
Great Rift, a band of dark dust clouds in the
Milky Way, which the Maya called the Xibalba be or "Black Road."
[45] Jenkins claims that the Maya were aware of where the
ecliptic intersected the Black Road and gave this position in the sky a special significance in their cosmology.
[46] According to the hypothesis, the Sun precisely aligns with this intersection point at the winter solstice of 2012.
[46] Jenkins claimed that the classical Mayans anticipated this conjunction and celebrated it as the harbinger of a profound spiritual transition for mankind.
[47] New Age proponents of the galactic alignment hypothesis argue that, just as
astrology uses the positions of stars and planets to make claims of future events, the Mayans plotted their calendars with the objective of preparing for significant world events.
[48] Jenkins attributes the insights of ancient Maya
shamans about the
galactic center to their use of
psilocybin mushrooms,
psychoactive toads, and other
psychedelics.
[49] Jenkins also associates the Xibalba be with a "world tree", drawing on studies of contemporary (not ancient) Maya cosmology.
[50]Astronomers argue that the galactic equator is an entirely arbitrary line, and can never be precisely determined because it is impossible to say exactly where the Milky Way begins or ends. Jenkins claims he drew his conclusions about the location of the galactic equator from observations taken at above 11,000 feet, which is higher than any of the Maya lived.
[41] Furthermore, the precessional alignment of the Sun with any single point is not exclusive to a specific year, but takes place over a 36-year period, corresponding to its diameter. Jenkins himself notes that, even given his determined location for the line of the galactic equator, its most precise convergence with the centre of the Sun already occurred in 1998.
[51][52]Some Maya scholars, such as Barbara MacLeod, Michael Grofe, Eva Hunt, Gordon Brotherston, and Anthony Aveni,
[53] have suggested that some Mayan holy dates were timed to precessional cycles, but scholarly opinion on the subject remains divided.
[21] There is also little evidence, archaeological or historical, that the Maya placed any importance on solstices or equinoxes.
[21][54] It is possible that early Mesoamericans had an emphasis on solstices which was later forgotten,
[55] but this is also a disputed issue among Mayanists.
[21][54] The start date of the Long Count is not astronomically significant.
[56]Timewave zero and the I Ching
A screenshot of the Timewave Zero software
"Timewave zero" is a
numerological formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of "novelty", defined as increase in the
universe's interconnectedness, or
organised complexity,
[57] over time. According to
Terence McKenna, who conceived the idea over several years in the early-mid 1970s while using
psilocybin mushrooms and
DMT, the universe has a
teleological attractor at the
end of time that increases interconnectedness, eventually reaching a
singularity of infinite complexity in 2012, at which point anything and everything imaginable will occur simultaneously.
[57]McKenna expressed "novelty" in a computer program, which purportedly produces a waveform known as timewave zero or the timewave. Based on McKenna's interpretation of the
King Wen sequence of the
I Ching,
[37] the graph appears to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity's biological and cultural evolution. He believed the events of any given time are
recursively related to the events of other times, and chose the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date in November 2012. When he later discovered this date's proximity to the end of the 13th b'ak'tun on the Maya calendar, he revised his hypothesis so that the two dates matched.
[58]The first edition of The Invisible Landscape refers to 2012 (as the year, not a specific day) only twice. McKenna originally considered it an incidental observation that his and José Argüelles dates matched, a sign of the end date "being programmed into our unconscious".[
citation needed] It was only in 1983, with the publication of Sharer's revised table of date correlations in the 4th edition of Morley's The Ancient Maya, that each became convinced that December 21, 2012 had significant meaning. McKenna subsequently peppered this specific date throughout the second, 1993 edition of The Invisible Landscape.
[2]Popularization
In 2006, author
Daniel Pinchbeck popularised New Age concepts about this date in his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, linking it to beliefs about
crop circles,
alien abduction, and personal revelations based on the use of
entheogens and
mediumship.
[59] Pinchbeck claims to discern a "growing realization that materialism and the rational, empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its expiration date...[w]e're on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness that's more intuitive, mystical and shamanic."
[60] Beginning in 2003, he has promoted these ideas annually in presentations at
Burning Man.
[59] In April 2010, Pinchbeck and several others released the documentary film
2012: Time for Change.
In India, the guru
Kalki Bhagavan has promoted 2012 as a "deadline" for human enlightenment since at least 1998.
[61][62] In the United States, the association of December 21, 2012 with a "transformation of consciousness" has also received popular attention in
The Lost Symbol (2009), a
bestseller work of
thriller fiction by
Dan Brown, in which the date is associated with references to esoteric beliefs of
Freemasonry and
noetic theory.
[63]Doomsday theories
A far more apocalyptic view of the year 2012 has also spread in various media. This view has been promulgated by
History Channel with the series
Decoding the Past (2005-2007), and its segment on the Mayan calendar, based loosely on John Major Jenkins' theories. However, Jenkins has characterized as "45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism". It was co-written by a
science fiction author.
[64] This show proved popular and was followed by many sequels: 2012, End of Days (2006),
Last Days on Earth (2006), Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2007), and Nostradamus 2012 (2008).
[65] Discovery Channel also aired 2012 Apocalypse in 2009, suggesting that massive
solar storms,
magnetic pole reversal,
earthquakes,
supervolcanoes, and other drastic natural events may occur in 2012.
[66]Geomagnetic reversal
One idea proposed in these films involves a
geomagnetic reversal (often incorrectly referred to as a
polar shift by proponents of this hypothesis), which could be triggered by a massive
solar flare, one with energy equal to 100 billion
atomic bombs.
[67] This belief is supposedly supported by observations that the Earth's
magnetic field is weakening,
[68] which indicates an impending reversal of the north and south magnetic poles. Scientists believe the Earth is overdue for a geomagnetic reversal, and has been for a long time, even since the time of the Mayans, because the last reversal was 780,000 years ago.
[69] Critics, however, claim geomagnetic reversals take up to 5,000 years to complete, and do not start on any particular date. Also,
NOAA now predicts that the
solar maximum will peak in 2013, not 2012, and that it will be fairly weak, with a below-average number of
sunspots.
[70] In any case, there is no scientific evidence linking a solar maximum to a geomagnetic reversal.
[71] A solar maximum would be mostly notable for its effects on satellite and cellular phone communications.
[72]Planet X/Nibiru
Proponents of a
Nibiru collision claim that a planet, called Planet X or Nibiru, will collide with or pass by Earth in that year. This idea, which has been circulating since 1995 in New Age circles and initially slated the event for 2003, is based on claims of
channeling from alien beings and has been widely ridiculed.
[73][74] Astronomers calculate that such an object so close to Earth would be visible to anyone looking up at the night sky.
[75][76]Black hole alignment
An apocalyptic reading of
Jenkins's hypothesis has that, when the galactic alignment occurs, it will somehow create a combined gravitational effect between the Sun and the
supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy (known as
Sagittarius A*), creating havoc on Earth.
[77] Apart from the fact noted above that the "galactic alignment" predicted by Jenkins already happened in 1998, the Sun's apparent path through the zodiac as seen from Earth does not take it near the true galactic center, but rather several degrees above it.
[78] Even if this were not the case, Sgr A* is 30,000 light years from Earth, and would have to be more than 6 million times closer to cause any gravitational disruption to Earth's Solar System.
[79][80]Some versions of this idea associate the theory of a 2012 "galactic alignment" with that of a very different "galactic alignment" proposed by some scientists to explain a supposed periodicity in
mass extinctions in the
fossil record.
[81] The hypothesis supposes that vertical oscillations made by the Sun as it orbits the galactic center cause it to regularly pass through the
galactic plane. When the Sun's orbit takes it outside the galactic disc, the influence of the
galactic tide is weaker; as it re-enters the galactic disc, as it does every 20–25 million years, it comes under the influence of the far stronger "disc tides", which, according to mathematical models, increase the flux of
Oort cloud comets into the Solar System by a factor of 4, leading to a massive increase in the likelihood of a devastating comet impact.
[82] However, this "alignment" takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date.
[83] Evidence shows that the Sun passed through the galactic disc only three million years ago, and is now moving farther above it.
[84]Web Bot project
Main article:
Web BotThe Web Bot project is a series of automated
bots that search the
internet for specific keywords, looking for patterns. Its co-creator, George Ure, states that its study of "web chatter" predicted the
September 11 attacks in New York, though he also suggests that the project can predict natural disasters, such as earthquakes. He now asserts that the project has predicted that the world will end on December 21, 2012.
[85] Critics of these proposals argue that while the collective knowledge of humanity could possibly predict terrorist attacks, stock market crashes or other human-caused events, there is no way it could predict something like an earthquake or the end of the world.
[85]
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