December 21 2012

[DJ_Asia]

Lots of talk going around regarding this date and its significance in the Mayan Calendar.

As some of you may already know the Mayans were highly advanced astronomers and their calendars were way advanced for their time.In fact many of the elements in the calendar we use today arent so unlike what the Mayans were doing a thousand + years ago.

The Mayan calendar abruptly ends on december 21 2012....Why?

Curious to hear what yall think about this date,and its importance or lack thereof

[hondarobot]

I've read a great deal about that whole thing. The Mayans had a very interesting mythology. Good topic to come back to, but I've got to go rig a fog machine up right now.

The easiest explanation for the calander ending would be: it has to end somewhere. But yeah, it's suppose to be the end of the "Sixth World". I guess we'll see.

[Quinn]

Cool topic. I've read quite a bit on this, but frankly haven't reached any conclusions. I'm definitley curious to here what others have to say.

-Quinn

[Mr_Choc69]

It depends on how you interpret "end".

The ending of their calendar is believed by some to be a "new beginning"

While some take it as the literal end of the world. It is open to interpretation - we may just have to wait and see.

[Night Rider]

Napoleon predicted it was going to end, and look at all the things he called.

[TheOne1]

If the world came to an end...i'd blame it on SUV emissions

[CORVETTEDUDE]

The "End" could happen TODAY!!! Who the hell knows? Mayan Calendar, Nostradomis, Mickey Mouse....etc. It is what it is, and will end when it ends....live it, don't worry about it!

Why did the chicken not cross the road?
He was afraid he might get to the other side!

[BeardedOne]

It depends on how you interpret "end".

The ending of their calendar is believed by some to be a "new beginning"

Well, it is an election year. I'll withhold my choice until January 20th of 2009.

Meanwhile, I pick the pizza & beer excuse. Them crazy, partyin' Mayans!

[Quinn]

Hing, I think you and I have read many of the same things. Some of the Vedic material, in particular, have been particularly interesting. Good stuff.

-Quinn

[xrey]

I had not heard of this but there is something very symmetrical about

12/20/2012

[trish]

hey guys. i just found out the world's already ended, three hours ago. we missed it 'cause we were sitting bickering, gossiping and downloading porn.

[hondarobot]

Interesting posts so far.

Here's my take on the whole thing. I'm pretty damn sure 12/21/2012 will be just an ordinary day (unless thats when the Night Rider will make his 1,000,000th post and the forum explodes), but I think the timing is interesting. Five years from now will be a time when exponential advancements in human technology will have finally begun to produce significant effects. I think the world will be a much different place, a move forward for humanity and the closing of the door on the last remnants of more primative influences.

I think the timing is a coincidence, but I do believe in many ways the old world is evolving into something new, and it's going to happen fairly soon.

Either that or nanobots go wild and everything turns to grey goo. I guess things could go either way.

:shrug

[Night Rider]

I'm pretty damn sure 12/21/2012 will be just an ordinary day (unless thats when the Night Rider will make his 1,000,000th post and the forum explodes)

LMAO

Or maybe it will be the day Vicki pursues legal action against you and you do some time.

By the way, bald, bearded whatever....once they find out you're a transsexual, you're gonna be in for a bumpy ride, whether you're a lesbian or not.

[rvince]

...because they realized their civilization would have been dead for 500 years by 2012, so it wasn't worth planning the calendar any further...

[CORVETTEDUDE]

If I remember correctly, the world was supposed to end in 1984 and, all the computers were supposed to crash at the change of the century.

The sky is falling, The sky is falling!!!

[peggygee]

Cool topic. I've read quite a bit on this, but frankly haven't reached any conclusions. I'm definitley curious to here what others have to say.

-Quinn

I'm with Quinn on this. I've read a bit on it, and have learned a
bit about Incan, Mayan, Aztec cultues while travelling abroad.

But I would love to learn more.

[Quinn]

...because they realized their civilization would have been dead for 500 years by 2012, so it wasn't worth planning the calendar any further...

That wasn't exactly the type of informative input I was hoping for, but it was really damn funny. Nice...

-Quinn

[happychris]

The Spanish showed up before the calendar guy had a chance to finish it.

[KiraHarden]

We have lived thru Y2K. I would be more concerned with the lack of water and oil in our future. The oil I believe we can find a alternate fuel for, but without water we are so FUCKED!

Cities around Milwaukee that cant meet their own water demands, are trying to pass and create bills to get at the fresh water from Lake Michigan. Which is protected under this Natural basin law. The Great Lakes will become Liquid gold as years pass.

[DJ_Asia]

We have lived thru Y2K. I would be more concerned with the lack of water and oil in our future. The oil I believe we can find a alternate fuel for, but without water we are so FUCKED!

Cities around Milwaukee that cant meet their own water demands, are trying to pass and create bills to get at the fresh water from Lake Michigan. Which is protected under this Natural basin law. The Great Lakes will become Liquid gold as years pass.

Nah the Bush Admin just needs to stop spending over a million dollars per minute on the "War on Terror" and actually use it to help the US...for instance by building some strategically placed desalination plants.Places like India,singapore,Saudi Arabia and many other places have them already built and functioning for years...But of course we all know that the war machine is so much more important than providing drinking water to the nation.

[KiraHarden]

We have lived thru Y2K. I would be more concerned with the lack of water and oil in our future. The oil I believe we can find a alternate fuel for, but without water we are so FUCKED!

Cities around Milwaukee that cant meet their own water demands, are trying to pass and create bills to get at the fresh water from Lake Michigan. Which is protected under this Natural basin law. The Great Lakes will become Liquid gold as years pass.

Nah the Bush Admin just needs to stop spending over a million dollars per minute on the "War on Terror" and actually use it to help the US...for instance by building some strategically placed desalination plants.Places like India,singapore,Saudi Arabia and many other places have them already built and functioning for years...But of course we all know that the war machine is so much more important than providing drinking water to the nation.
Now that you mention it. I did hear about the desalination plants when I was stationed in Saudi. I forgot all about this, its been a few years. You are right

[loSTdoLLbaBY]

I recall hearing that the I-Ching indicates something of a "big" event will occur around that same time- but you know the more obscure and obtuse the prediction the easier it is to say "Ah-HA!! see somebody predicted that"

as for me i plan on enjoying every day up till then- oh yeah and every day after it as well.... :D

[Trans Mission]

Lots of talk going around regarding this date and its significance in the Mayan Calendar.

As some of you may already know the Mayans were highly advanced astronomers and their calendars were way advanced for their time.In fact many of the elements in the calendar we use today arent so unlike what the Mayans were doing a thousand + years ago.

The Mayan calendar abruptly ends on december 21 2012....Why?

Curious to hear what yall think about this date,and its importance or lack thereof

The date doesn't necessarily symbolize the end of time, it's more like when your car hits 100,000 miles, it just turns over. December 23 or 21 2012, is an assumption of calendar and not time in general. There will be no solar flair that ignites earth, just some growing pains as we enter a new celestial event.

The mayans were prophetic like the Egyptians, why?, is the question, though?

[Jericho]

The mayans were prophetic like the Egyptians, why?, is the question, though?

No television.

[Trans Mission]

The mayans were prophetic like the Egyptians, why?, is the question, though?

No television.
I know, a lack of "Full House" is brutal.

[rawrr]

Well supposely the world is suppose to end in May 2008, the hardoncollider well thats what /b/ calls it. No we are not going to die in 2008 or 2012, I think its false and I will probs die of something different but hey I reckon I'm going to live until 2085.

[memyself]

some further reading that may intrest: www.crystalinks.com/vedic.html

[odelay24]

It's funny, pre-September 11 and all that terribleness, people used to always say "oh, it's signalling the end!" but now people tend to say "it's signalling renewal".

So I dunno. Maybe it is a signal of the second coming or something, but people are too scared to admit it.

[hondarobot]

It's funny, pre-September 11 and all that terribleness, people used to always say "oh, it's signalling the end!" but now people tend to say "it's signalling renewal".

So I dunno. Maybe it is a signal of the second coming or something, but people are too scared to admit it.

The second coming? The Mayans already have a "second coming" type story recorded in their mythology, and it's kinda funny actually. It involves a pair known as The Heroic Twins who at one point have to descend into the Mayan hells, and eventually return to earth, promptly becoming the Sun and Moon.

What exactly was lighting and heating the earth before this event is never really much of an issue, story wise.

One of the best parts of the myth is when one of the twins peeks outside his blowgun (they were hiding from bats) prematurely, and gets his head lopped off. This does not slow down the twins, as they devise a plan to replace the head with a gourd and then challenge the gods to a game of basketball (I'm not making this up). Of course, the ball to be used is the lost twins head which they manage to recover, and presumably, win the game.

I doubt the Mayans were much for future telling, but they knew how to tell one hell of a story.

:wink:

[Fox]

Some have suggested that it will be the beginning of a change in the way humans think and behave. That we will be more spiritual (not necessarily religious), in tune with eachother and our environment, and families and communities will be tighter. What frightens me about that is the fact that that sort of thing doesn't usually happen until a tragedy happens (9-11 for example).

I guess we'll see. >_>


I also find it fascinating that it claims that humams were much more intelligent, physically stronger and lived much longer in the previous ages and genetically we have all deteriorated in this current cycle.

Very interesting. I've heard of reports (from where or who I don't know) of scientists saying that in about another 1000 years mankind will reach our peak as far as our physical is concerned. That we will be 7 feet tall on average (it is said that the average height of people a millenia ago was much shorter, maybe 5 feet or so), live to 120-150 on average, our mental capacity fully unlocked (it is said we use about 10% of our brains now), stronger, etc. It certainly lends credence to what you said. I have no proof of any of this, just stuff I remember hitting my radar fairly recently.

These things aren't enough to deter my faith in God, but it certainly piques my interest and opens my mind. I've always found this type of stuff fascinating. Good thread.

[Ecstatic]

This is a fascinating topic, but one which is usually given only limited scope, specifically the treatment of the single Mayan calendar known to archeologists as the Long Count, an impressive calendrical system which marked as its Zero Day as August 13, 3114 BCE, and which divided time into complex patterns: years of 18 months (uinal) with 20 days (kin), making a 360 day year (tun). Tun were then grouped by twenties (katun) (20 x 360 = 7200 days), with 20 katun making a baktun (144,000 days), all the way up to the alautun (64,000,000 years). To determine precisely the date a monument was erected, for instance, they would write something like 7 baktun 13 katun 0 tun 0 uinal 11 kin (7 x 400 + 13 x 20 = 3,060 years). Their numbers were marked by gylphs that combined dots and lines, except for 0, which was represented by gylphs of faces.

However, the Long Count is only a small part of the picture. The Maya actually used at least six calendars to represent time in different ways, and for some very complex calculations concerning the "end times" (which I'll get to). The 360-day year was mathematically convenient, but of course does not correspond with the Earth's sidereal year of 365.242 days. Thus they used the so-called Civil Calendar alongside the Long Count, called the Haab, of 18 20-day months and 5 phantom days tagged onto the end, coming up only 1/4 day short (very similar to the effect of our Gregorian calendar with its need of leap years and leap centuries to adjust for the slippage of time). Interestingly, and as far as I know uniquely in human history, the Haab'd months begin with the day 0, with the second day being 1 (if we had adopted this approach when marking the supposed birth year of Jesus as year one, we would have avoided the mess of whether the new millenium began in 2000 (neat, but only 1999 years after the first) or 2001 (2000 years after the year zero)).

It doesn't stop there, however. The Maya also had a calendar, the Tzolkin or sacred year, of 260 days, which really ties in with the end of time concept. This calendar was marked in two cycles, one of 20 day-names and one of the numbers 1 through 13, with the 13 representing the 13 gods of the upper world and 20 the number of man. Their fourth calendar was a cycle of 9 representing the gods of the night, the fifth a lunar calendar of 29- and 30-day months, and finally a sixth based, believe it or not, on the 584-day synodic cycle of Venus (the time of the planet's apparent oscillation from one side of the sun to the other).

All of these worked together with incredible intricacy, ultimately establishing cycles and times of ritual to prevent the end of time (that time when the calendars would align). For the 365-day Haab and 260-day Tzolkin, with 5 as the greatest common divisor of 260 and 365, this would occur after a period of 18,980 days or 52 Haab or 73 Tzolkin years (260 x 365 over 5 = 18,980). This was known as the Calendar Round.

Since the Mayans' greatest fear was that time would stop, they calculated these complex cycles to prevent the occurance coming too soon, and built in rituals to offset the actual occurance. Their mathematician priests even calculated the synodic year of Mars (780 days), and perhaps that of Mercury (116 days). By one reckoning, the Mayan life of the universe would be 2 x 10 to the 27th power (a far larger number than our own dating of the Big Bang to 1.2 x 10 to the 10th, or 12 billion years).

Now the Lords of the Night were ruled by the Death God, who was Zero. And he's the twin that Honda refers to in the ritual battle who must be slain.

So no, I don't believe that the world will end in 2012, only that the date appears mathematically as the result of a set of calculations based on the complex Mayan calendrical system.

The Four Ages of Man is a fascinating topic as well, echoed in all major religions and mythologies (Hindu, Mayan, Greek, Hopi, Navaho, and many others). To me, it is race memory of early times of man: the Golden Age or Satya Yuga refers to the time of man as hunter-gatherer, when the world was rich--at least along the middle latitudes and along the oceans. Eden. Lemuria. The First World. Of course, all was not perfect, we just like to remember it that way.

Next, the Silver Age, the withdrawal of glaciation which flooded the coastal paradises around the world (all those myths of the flood from most every land), forcing man to live by his wits in a harsher clime (kicked out of Eden and forced to work), in man's prehistory the time of the beginnings of agriculture.

Next, the Bronze age, the beginning of civilization as we know it with the rise of city-states, early writing, and the forging of weapons of bronze. Of course, this is a harsher time insofar as something new appeared: war. Finally, the Iron Age or Kali Yuga, with the emergence of iron smelting, larger cities followed by country-states, more war, conquest of large areas of land (timed by the Hindu to correspond with the Aryan invasion of north India out of the steppes of the mid East), ultimately bringing us to modern society.

But it's not just a circle: if we don't kill ourselves off, we will prosper as never before, discovering peace and cooperation as science and technology free us from the need for conflict even as the alternative of annihilation makes conflict inconceivable (hey, I can dream). Space, the oceans, understanding the human genome to eliminate or mitigate disease, it's all potentially before us in a new Golden Age/Satya Yuga/Fifth World.

Regarding the I Ching: the I Ching makes no predictions whatsoever. Its divinations exist purely in the moment, for the individual seeking insight at that moment. It is indicative of 64 fundamental states of the human condition (actually, rather comprehensive as such), but it's always in flux and is not a record of prediction.

Whew. I'll bet even Peggy never went on this long. Sorry, I got carried away.....

[Fox]

Whew. I'll bet even Peggy never went on this long. Sorry, I got carried away.....

Don't apologize for dropping knowlegde. If you have more to share, please do. 8)

[DJ_Asia]

I doubt the Mayans were much for future telling, but they knew how to tell one hell of a story.

:wink:

Just goes to show what can happen if you eat a little peyote every now and again.

I think the whole integrated Mayan calendar system is way too complex and too revered for them to simply get tired of making calendars.12-21-12 will mark the end of something...what...I dunno,but its not just a date.

[hondarobot]

I doubt the Mayans were much for future telling, but they knew how to tell one hell of a story.

:wink:

Just goes to show what can happen if you eat a little peyote every now and again.

I think the whole integrated Mayan calendar system is way too complex and too revered for them to simply get tired of making calendars.12-21-12 will mark the end of something...what...I dunno,but its not just a date.

I think the date is an approximation, but a pretty good one. You can miss with a shotgun at long range. Five years from now, humans will have much better tools. How those tools get used by that date is difficult to say.

The basketball game story with the guys head is pretty damn funny, though, ya gotta admit.

[Ecstatic]

It's not that the Maya got tired of making calendars, but their entire culture collapsed, making way for the Aztec culture which in turn fell to the Spaniards. The Maya were amazing: on the one hand, the most complex and accurate calendrical system of any ancient people, one of the most advance systems of mathematics of any ancient culture, one of the few cultures to develop the concept of zero, and expert builders, yet on the other hand obssessed with the end of things and with a blood culture which is horrific.

Something may well happen around that date: something usually does. But not thanks to any prophecy, simply due to coincidence, or, if you prefer, synchonicity. I don't know about the date, but personally I think that some heavy shit will hit the fan this century, but not be the end of civilization; instead, humankind will emerge better for it in the long run. Maybe by the 23rd century we'll be doing ok. (Hmm....Gene Roddenberry....)

[Colorado Dan]

The Hopi have a special cliff with prophetic drawings, which have predicted every major conflict! The last one being The Mother of all Wars which will bring about the end of life on earth about 2019! They believe the earth then is covered by water and evolution starts all over again. They believe the earth is used 4 times for development of life, and we are now on the third one! And the Bible actually backs that up! The last page says that the Devil will be let loose on the Earth One more time!!!

[hondarobot]

The Hopi have a special cliff with prophetic drawings, which have predicted every major conflict! The last one being The Mother of all Wars which will bring about the end of life on earth about 2019! They believe the earth then is covered by water and evolution starts all over again. They believe the earth is used 4 times for development of life, and we are now on the third one! And the Bible actually backs that up! The last page says that the Devil will be let loose on the Earth One more time!!!

And then the shape shifting lizard people will rule the earth. Sorry, I just don't buy it. Good stories, but not very practical when you really think about it.