Maria Miller

Editor-in-Chief

     Western culture believes in the Apocalypse.  In other words, we know that when the end of the world comes, by gum, it’s going to be a really big deal.  We have scenarios to suit every imagination, from alien invasions to gigantic meteor crashes (where’s Bruce Willis when you need him?).  Religious theorists try to crack God’s code in Revelations (though always seeming to overlook Matthew 24:36 “No one knows about that day or hour”), but our zombie-proof gear still stands at the ready.  Oh, we know how it’s going down.  It’s just a matter of when. 

     Doomsday theorists across the globe constantly attempt to “calculate” the date of our world’s end.  Plenty of apocalyptic scares including Y2K have gotten our attention especially since the new millennium.  So, naturally, when the news about the Mayan Long Count calendar hit the papers, things got way out of hand.

     Thousands of years ago, the Mayans sat themselves down and made a calendar in order to document and predict events far into the future.  They had time durations equivalent to our Gregorian calendar’s months, years, etc. in their calendar that we have named the Long Count.  But the Mayans also had a long period of time (taking up 13 “baktuns,” or 13 sets of approximately 394 years) that they considered to be a “creation cycle.”  The date of the Mayan creation cycle’s beginning is disputed, but is calculated to have begun in the 3000’s B.C.  The kicker?  This creation cycle ends on December 21, 2012. 

     Of course when the entertainment media heard of this, they grabbed hold of the date and didn’t let go - new films such as “2012” sent tsunamis through New York City, etc.  Most people write these films off as silly movies trying to make money, but there is an underlying thought in all of us - when December rolls around this year, what is going to happen?  Could the Mayans really have been predicting the end of the world?

     The answer is no.  The Mayans believed that much like the beginning of a new century, the “creation cycle” would start over once it ended.  No hellfire and brimstone; just a new beginning.  Another thing Hollywood fails to mention is that ancient Mayan culture didn’t even believe in an apocalyptic end to the world - they thought that “time begins and ends with regularity.”  Even if the Mayans scheduled for the Long Count Calendar to end this year, they certainly weren’t predicting that Atlas was going to suddenly decide to crush Earth in his arms. 

     Any doomsday ideas about December 21st were added by religious beliefs of Western culture, blown out of proportion by Hollywood, and cashed in by cheap shots wanting to sell a few doomsday books.  We can worry all we want about what is going to happen in December, but this date, set by the ancient Maya people, has nothing to do with the apocalypse.