Doomsday 2012 was born body and soul with the creation of the Mayan Calendar. Society has been worrying about the upcoming date for years now, wondering what will happen to the world when the day finally comes. However, the story behind the Mayan Calendar is something not commonly known to many people. The Mayan Calendar ends on Dec. 21 of this year, but many people don’t know why they ended it there, or why the calendar was remembered today.
Dec. 21 is the date that ends the 5125-year-long cycle of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. It was used by many Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, but most notably used by the ones behind it all: the Mayan. The count began on Aug. 11, in the year 3114 BC, and it’s finally ending now. The end of the calendar has many people in modern society coming up with different conclusions on what will happen on the last day.
Several people assume the world will end in a major apocalypse or worldwide epidemic. Others believe that cataclysmic events will not occur, and think that the end of the calendar marks the beginning of a new era. They believe it will be the start of a new calendar. Although, most people are assuming nothing will happen as the date comes by.
“I think that all the people who liquidated their finances are going to regret it when the world doesn’t end,” junior Tiffany Stachnik said. “Personally, I don’t think it’s going to end.”
But where did all these rumors come from? One possibility goes back to the Sumerians, who thought they discovered a twelfth planet called Nibiru, which was predicted to collide with earth in 2003. When this didn’t happen, the doomsday date was pushed back to Dec. 21, 2012, when the Mayan Calendar was predicted to end.
However, contrary to popular belief, the Mayans were not all preachers of the world’s end. In fact, they were almost exactly the opposite. Their calendar was much more accurate mathematically than any other calendar at the time. Dec. 21 marks the end of the huge count of the Mayan Calendar, and ultimately the beginning of another count.
