Ever since the beginning of the world, people have been fixated with the end of the world. Throughout history, there are those who have claimed to prognosticate future events, or at least people have come to believe that they could. From the Book of Revelation to the quatrains of Nostradamus, people have looked back to these scribes with historical hindsight and said, “hey, it sounds like he’s talking about…” and claimed that he was predicting anything from the assassination of JFK to the 9/11 attacks. With a little creativity, you can find prophecy in just about any written work from the past. (For example, in 1898 Morgan Robertson wrote a novel called Futility about a massive luxury liner called Titan which hits an iceberg and sinks on its maiden voyage. Sound familiar?)
The ancient Mayan civilization had a calendar that was very intricate and detailed. It has been interpreted as having foretold certain historical events. (Though, strangely enough, nothing in it foretells the collapse of their own civilization.) And that calendar ends on December 21, 2012, less than five years from now. Some have interpreted that to mean that the world will end on that day.
They could predict the end of the world, but not their own collapse. Yeah, right. If the Mayans were so smart, where are they now?
Then there are those half-baked wannabe astronomers who point out that on the date in question, there’s going to be some celestial alignment between the sun, earth, and the center of the galaxy. This galactic equinox happens every 26,000 years, and last I heard, no anthropologists had found evidence of a global catastrophe the last time it happened, though they can find the point in time 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs died.
This theory needs to go in the “silly” file, along with the assertion that the moon landings were a hoax and that “Planet X” would pass enough to earth to cause a polar shift in May 2003. (Note, five years later, we’re all still here.)
All calendars end. Most end on December 31. (Calendar makers came to realize they made more money selling a new one every year.) That doesn’t mean the world is going to end next New Year’s Eve. Like the Y2K and numerous calculations of the exact date when Jesus Christ will return, it’s all just a psychotic misinterpretation. I think the doomsayers are just trying to get out of Christmas shopping that year.
Unless Sarah Palin actually somehow wins the Presidency in 2012. Then all bets are off.
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