December 21 2012 INFOgot.com

Post-Tribune

Mayans Portend End of World Coming

I've been thinking about the apocalypse lately. And so will you, soon.
If you haven't heard of the Mayan calendar yet, get ready. The numerical fascination with "9-11" may be replaced with "12-21-12."

The Mayans, those precursors to the Aztecs, had a thing for numbers and astronomy. Without calculators or Google Earth, they combined their knowledge of these two subjects to create a calendar unlike any other, not based just on the movement of the sun, like our Gregorian version, or on the movement of the moon, like some other ancient cultures.

The Mayans broke time down into a lot of cycles. But their big calendar, the Long Count, has a feature that scares a lot of people: It ends on Dec. 21, 2012.

I can't remember where I first heard this doomsday idea, but it's been long enough ago that I talked with a tour guide in Mexico while on vacation there a couple years back.

He'd been talking about Mayan history, so on a break I asked him about the 2012 calendar.

He was a little freaked. Oh, don't talk about that, he told me. It's scary.

I had to kind of laugh. I've seen enough episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to know the apocalypse is not always The End of the World. It's more (with apologies to REM), The End of the World as We Know It.

You'd think after all the promised doom of Y2K, we'd be over these fears. But no, some people are prophesying the world will end, again, and many are eating it up. In doing a little research on this subject, I found out Hollywood has latched onto the Long Count, and a movie is in the works.

Of course one of the flick's writers and a proponent of the doomsday theory is Whitley Strieber, better known for his book on alien abduction, "Communion." He's apparently decided the Mayans were trying to tell us aliens will invade come Dec. 21, 2012.

Ho-hum. Hasn't that movie already been made?

Other writers are trying to sell us a cosmic convergence, a change in the world and life as we know it, but in a good way. And frankly, I'm down with that. I'd love to see humanity stretch a little into enlightenment.

Of course, I'm also a cynic, so I'm thinking some people are going to have to stretch a lot to get there.

Or we could all be getting upset about nothing, because those wily Mayans didn't say what happens when the Long Count gets to that date. Maybe the calendar rolls over and we start at zero again? Maybe they just got tired of counting after 5,000 years?

But it is odd that other cultures, like the Hopi and Hindus, have also forecast an ending of a time period in the near future. And some Christians have been saying for the Book of Revelations will happen soon.

I always say there's not one path each of us should follow, that what works for one person might not for his neighbor. Maybe we will all get our answers.

Fundamentalist Christians can be swooped up to heaven. Hindus and Hopi might get their longed-for Golden Age. Little gray aliens will cart off Whitley Strieber in a spaceship.

And maybe I'll finally find whatever I'm looking for.

The clock's ticking. There's just five years and 40 days left. What do you want the world to be?

Diane Aden Hayes 11.11.2007.