Taipei, June 5 (CNA) The Mayan prophesy that the world will end in 2012 is nothing but a show business fabrication, a distinguished Mexican astronomer said recently in Taiwan, asserting that a rare view of the planet Venus this week will present a far more accurate picture of the Mayan calendar.
Jesus Galindo Trejo, a researcher at National Autonomous University of Mexico, said there was no Mayan document predicting doomsday in 2012 as has been highly publicized in popular media.
"The saying did not exist in the ancient Mayan culture, and it does not exist in modern astronomy, either," Galindo said at a forum at the Taipei Astronomical Museum over the weekend.
Those spreading the idea of the Mayan apocalypse contend that the world will come to an end on Dec. 21 or 22 this year, when the Mayan "Long Count" calendar completes a "great cycle" covering 13 smaller cycles over 5,125 years.
But Galindo said the calendar was merely one of many Mesoamerican calendars used in ancient times.
Also, due to different interpretations of the calendar, whose original versions were destroyed when the Spanish occupied the region in the 1600s, the exact starting point of the calendar remains a mystery.
In other words, Galindo said, there is not even a consensus that the 13th cycle of the Long Count ends this year -- a time when some believe a widespread catastrophe will be triggered, bringing an end to human civilization.
Having studied astrophysics and astronomical archaeology for more than 20 years, Galindo said that if people wanted to find out the truth about the end of the 13th cycle, called "Baktun," they should follow Venus on Wednesday.
On that day, the planet is expected to travel between the sun and the earth, forming a small dot in front of the sun as seen from the earth.
A rare celestial event that comes in pairs eight years apart, with each pair separated by over a century, the transit of Venus could coincide with the end of the latest Baktun, Galindo said.
"The Mayans worshiped Venus and depended much on it in time recording," Galindo said.
He believes this transit of Venus best represents the description of the conclusion of the 13th Baktun left behind in ancient Mayan documents.
To sum up, Galindo said that instead of panicking over the so-called Mayan prophesy, one should feel upbeat about embracing the start of a new cycle -- whenever that date is.
"No one in my country is really worried about this 2012 thing," he said. "On the contrary, Mexicans are all thrilled as the nonsense has brought us tons of foreign tourists."
No comments:
Post a Comment