2012: End of an Era

2012 is set to be a momentous year, the very first winter youth Olympics are going to be held in January, the US are going to have a presidential election and the UK are going to observe the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth. In case you're looking forward to 2013 you should not get your hopes up, considering that based on some prophecies, everything is due to end on December 21. If you happen to enjoy Christmas, take full advantage of this season and the next, because according to the Mayan calendar, they will be your very last. Perhaps.

Before Europeans appeared in meso America the population employed a complicated mixture of calendars to record their days.  The Haab or solar calendar, both a timepiece and Mayan art form, was composed of 18 twenty day months and also a period of five days referred to as Wayeb to bring the total to 365.

The Tzolkin however was a cycle of 260 days, thirteen times 20.  No-one knows quite the reason 260 days were decided on, though it seems that the numbers 13 and 20 were both important to these early cultures. There's a possibility that it is based on the amount of time between a woman's initial missed period and the birth of  her offspring, and made it easier to predict when a baby would be born, however various other hypotheses about crop harvesting and zodiac findings may perhaps be just as accurate. Most dates could possibly be set by a combination of the Haab and Tzolin, the period would come together once every fifty two years, which is about once in every generation.

To observe periods longer than fifty-two years the Mayans applied a different structure which we now refer to as the Long Count calendar. This system is shown in both Olmec and Aztec art and wasn't invented by the Maya. Dates run forwards from the mythologic day zero, the day of the beginning of the current world. Like all civilizations the base units were days, with twenty days in a uinal and 18 uinals in the tun (more or less a year). A K'atun consisted of 20 tuns and 20 of these a b'ak'tun. Once again the number 13 is important and a number of inscriptions in Mayan artwork show the date changing at the conclusion of 13 b'ak'tuns and talked of events to occur on that date. This lead to  suggestions that the Mayans envisioned something substantial to occur on the last day of the 13th B'ak'tun. That day has been calculated to be 21st or 23 December 2012. What exactly might we expect?

Well according to a large number of scholars nothing in the least. There are several references to things going on about that time frame in inscriptions, however nothing very concrete, so it is really surprising the amount of fuss 2012 seems to be creating. Some say there may a religious evolution, while other people talk about a momentous galactic alignment, though this is founded on the location of the galactic equator, which can't be identified, this does not appear extremely probable. But others worry about planet Niburu.

Collision with planet X (or Niburu) has been predicted since 2003, but any planet close enough to be within collision with the Earth in 2012 would certainly now be plainly visible to astronomers in the evening sky. Sadly this fictional collision is now confused in the media with the real and predicted approach of a giant asteroid referred to as Eros which is likely to pass our planet in 2012. Eros is greater than the asteroid that we think killed the dinosaurs 65 millions years ago but since it will never be nearer than seventy times the distance of the moon, it's not likely to do any damage.

Looking at the Mayan calendar is a great reason to think about just how we calculate time and why, to comprehend the solar cycles that still rule our life and also to admire the artwork of a fascinating society. As to getting ready for the end of the world, that still would seem a little premature.