Controversy Answered: When Does the Mayan Calendar End?

Unless you have been living inside a cave these past few years, you have probably heard about the predictions regarding the year 2012, and the things that might happen then. There are a lot of ideas as to what would actually occur. I guess it is inevitable that some would connect with the Biblical end of the world. Some religious preachers are claiming that it will mark the return of Jesus Christ or the Judgement day. Some New Age thinkers feel that the year will mark spiritual renewal for the whole world, a change that will be more positive in nature. There are so many ideas that are surrounding the year but there is really no clear idea as to what it will bring. All that is clearly known, is that in some ways it is connected somehow with the Mayan civilization.

The Mayans are probably the most mysterious civilization that ever existed. They left marks of the high degree of the sophistication that they had reached, but still we are left wondering as to who they really were and what they had achieved. One aspect of their culture that still astounds scientists and learned men even today is how they were able to devise a very accurate calendar. This calendar is based on accurate observation of the heavens and the stars. This is called the Mayan long count calendar. A few years ago, some scholars who were studying these calendars discovered that this calendar would be ending soon and that its end would also mean the end of the world.

So when does the Mayan calendar end? That date would fall on December 21, 2012 sometimes shown as 21122012, which could explain the great concern that has been raised over the coming year. It has been claimed by the scholars studying Mayan texts that the end of the calendar would also mean the destruction of the world. Should we be concerned?

The people who would be most qualified to provide an answer to this question would be the scientists over at NASA. The agency’s official stand is that nothing will happen in the year 2012 aside from the regular things that we have observed to occur. They say that when you analyze all of the claims placed on the Internet, it all points out to flimsy theories, with no scientific backing at all. Mainstream Mayan scholars also claim that the interpretation that the world will end when the Mayan long count calendar ends, is simply absurd. They say that the ancient Mayan calendar is just like the calendar that we use, which ends on December 31 but starts anew on the 1st of January of the New Year. The claim that the end of the world will coincide with the end of the calendar can be traced to a writer in the 70s who misinterpreted the Mayan way of counting time and the significance of their dates. Mayan scholars say that there are no genuine references in the Mayan records that indicate that they made predictions about the end of times.