As the time for this prediction gets closer, I have been asked about this more and more frequently. The only reason I am writing this article is that I was asked by two different well-educated people at two different businesses within half an hour about the Mayan prediction of the "End of the World."
Each conversation started in almost exactly the same way... "Dean, you know a bit about astronomy, what do you think about the Mayan 2012 Doomsday Prediction?"
I replied, "All those guys on TV who talk about the 2012 end of the world have bad haircuts, talk in funny accents, go by names like Cedric, Rupert and Percival, and are masters of the words 'could, if, maybe, might, perhaps, possibly, potentially and what.'
"Then they quote some obscure ancient documents made by the astronomer-priests who practiced human sacrifice and present that as ironclad proof that the 'End of the World' is imminent.
"To further cement the current hoax, they mention that the winter solstice will coincide with the rising of the sun with the galactic core, which is a mere 28,000 light years distant."
That indeed might sound pretty impressive except for the fact that the nearest star system to the Earth is Alpha Centauri, which lies 4.4 light years away - 25 trillion miles away.
The fastest spacecraft we have launched, Voyager 1, is traveling at 11 miles per second. At that speed you could reach La Crosse, Wis., in 3 seconds, (wouldn't that be nice!), but to reach Alpha Centauri would take 40,000 years.
But no matter; the conjunction of the Earth, sun and our galactic core will take place on Dec. 21, the winter solstice. How did they predict this in the first place?
The astronomer-priests of the New World, which included the Mayan, Aztec and Incan civilizations, were undoubtedly the greatest visual astronomers the world has ever seen. They could tell summer solstice, autumnal equinox, winter solstice and vernal equinox. These are all crucial to the planting and harvesting of crops.
In short, somebody had to have the ability to tell time. They did this by inventing three calendars: one, a five day "week;" second, a 260-day calendar that coincided with the orbit of Venus that had great impact for their religious purposes, and a 360-day solar calendar that gave them 18 months of 20 days.
The 260-day calendar and the 360-day calendar started on the same day only once every 52 years and this they called it "The Calendar Round".
They knew that they had to throw in five extra days at the end, which where considered "unlucky." Even more impressive, in my opinion, was that they could forecast lunar and solar eclipses, which must have seemed like magic to the average populace. But for me, the most astounding thing that they accomplished in visual astronomy was that they knew that for a star to rise one calendar day later than in the previous calendar year, it took 72 years to accomplish this. This is what causes the precession of the Earth's poles, which takes 25,800 years to shift from current pole star to come around again to the one we see in our sky. This fascinated me to no end, because the average lifespan of a New World astronomer-priest/human sacrificer was only roughly 50 years. How could they accomplish this? The answer is simple. They stared through a hole in the wall of their temples and timed when a prominent star arose. Since the rise of that star took more than their lifetimes, the information had to be passed down from father to son, or elder to apprentice. This would have taken incredible patience, and probably would have beaten watching television. It also may have explained why human sacrifice might have made up for the tedium of proving the existence of precession, but knowing this was vital to knowing of the passing of a "world age." When the sun did not rise in a certain constellation in the sky, or in the case of the New World astronomer-priests, they often used the dark nebulas in the Milky Way to judge this. Then when the sun passes from one mark to another, which also makes our Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn no longer pertinent, to them it was the end of a World Age. Since they were exceptional visual observers, but had never looked through a telescope, how wonderful it would be if I could get one of them to Eagle Bluff one night, overcome the language barrier, have the guy dressed for Minnesota cold and could persuade him not to sink his obsidian knife into my chest to cut my heart out. We could have learned a lot from each other. But the chances of that are the same as the Mayan Doomsday prediction coming true on Dec. 21. Once again, we are faced with that (at least to Cedric, Percival and Rupert). We are now faced with the End of the World. This has to rate right up there with the Y2K scare of 2000 and the Millerite end of the world prediction of 1859, which was tried twice. What will happen on Dec. 21, 2012? Well, I can tell you just what will happen. Cedric, Percival and Rupert will be down at their favorite bar with decent haircuts, no longer talking in funny accents and calling each other by their real names of Charlie, Pete and Bob, and they'll be bragging about how much money each of them made by scaring the hell out of people while they are enjoying a cold beer. Then they will start brainstorming about the next big End of the World event when the asteroid Apophis will make its close pass to Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029. (Ooooh! Scary!) Stand by, astronomy fans, I'm sure there will be more on THAT to come. In the meantime, one word of advice, BE SURE TO GET YOUR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING DONE EARLY! Because when the poor saps who have bought into this farce wake up on Dec. 22 to find that they are still here and the world hasn't come to an end, the malls are going to be packed!
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