What Happens in 2012?

I first heard that the poop was going to hit the proverbial fan a few years back while I was building a website for a new age, naturopathic health company. The owner of the company tried to explain what it was all about, but either she did a terrible job, or I wasn’t open to the idea at the time.

I’m still not entirely convinced that this date in the Mayan calendar is a precursor to some terrible event, and I will explain why shortly. But there is more going on in 2012 than just a Mayan calendar date – there seems to be a convergence of ideal and beliefs, from all corners of the Earth, each indicating that 2012 holds something special for the human race. It’s a great time to be alive!

Ok, so why is 2012 – December 21, 2012 to be exact – a significant date in the Mayan calendar? The Maya civilization is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its spectacular art, monumental architecture, and sophisticated mathematical and astronomical systems. (Thank you, Wikipedia!)

The Mayan calendar – the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar to be exact – was constructed by the Mayans around 250-900 AD. Prior to the Long Count calendar, the Mayans used a number of other calendars to measure time. The Tzolk’in calendar lasted for 260 days and the Haab’ approximated the solar year of 365 days. These were combined to form the “Calendar Round”, a cycle lasting 52 Haab’s (around 52 years, or the approximate length of a generation). Using the Calendar Round was fine if you simply wanted to remember the date of your birthday or significant religious periods, but what about record history? There was no way to record a date older than 52 years.

Up to this point, the Mayan Calendar may have sounded a little archaic – after all, it was possibly based on religious belief, the menstrual cycle, mathematical calculations using the numbers 13 and 20 as the base units and a heavy mix of astrological myth. The solution to a longer calendar could be found in the “Long Count”, a calendar lasting 5126 years!

The Mayan Long Count calendar uses a base unit of 20, and starts at the base year of “0.0.0.0.0″. Each zero goes from 0-19 and each represent a tally of Mayan days. The first day in the Long Count is denoted as 0.0.0.0.1. The 19th day is 0.0.0.0.19, and on the 20th day it goes up one level so we’d have 0.0.0.1.0. This count continues until 0.0.1.0.0 (about one year), 0.1.0.0.0 (about 20 years) and 1.0.0.0.0 (about 400 years).

This is all very interesting, but what has this got to do with the end of the world? The Mayan Prophecy is wholly based on the assumption that something bad is going to happen when the Mayan Long Count calendar runs out. Experts are divided as to when the Long Count ends, but as the Maya used the numbers of 13 and 20 at the root of their numerical systems, the last day could occur on 13.0.0.0.0. When does this happen? Well, 13.0.0.0.0 represents 5126 years and the Long Count started on 0.0.0.0.0, which corresponds to the modern date of August 11th 3114 BC. Some experts believe the Mayan Long Count ends 5126 years later on December 21st, 2012.

The Mayan Doomsday Prophecy is purely based on a calendar which some people believe hasn’t been designed to calculate dates beyond 2012.

Have you seen the problem yet? Each of the columns in this calendar use base 20, but for some reason, not the left column. Why would the calendar stop at 13.0.0.0.0 when the base is 20? Shouldn’t the calendar continue on to 20.0.0.0.0 until the end of the world? Or – and here’s the kicker – wouldn’t it just tick over to 0.0.0.0.0 like every other calendar ever created and start again? Why all this pessimistic doomsday stuff?

Mayan archaeo-astronomers are still debating whether the Long Count is designed to be reset to 0.0.0.0.0 after 13.0.0.0.0, or whether the calendar simply continues to 20.0.0.0.0 (approximately 8000 AD) and then resets. As Karl Kruszelnicki brilliantly writes:

“…when a calendar comes to the end of a cycle, it just rolls over into the next cycle. In our Western society, every year 31 December is followed, not by the End of the World, but by 1 January. So 13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan calendar will be followed by 0.0.0.0.1 – or good-ol’ 22 December 2012, with only a few shopping days left to Christmas.” – Excerpt from Dr Karl’s “Great Moments in Science”.

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