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posted Nov. 6, 2009
promotional poster for the movie 2012
2012: END OF THE WORLD—NOT!
So-called 'Mayan Prophecies' are ignored by actual Mayans
By Janice Van Cleve
Doomsdayers, Creationists, New-Agers, and Conspiracy Theorists have created a buzz about a worldwide apocalypse set to occur on December 21, 2012. They have also created enough of an audience to entice Roland Emmerich (producer of Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow) to turn out yet another mega disaster movie called 2012 to be released soon. It is all poppycock, of course. The only sure prediction is that Emmerich will make a pile of money off of the sensation seekers and the gullible.
The movie trailer begins ominously with the words: "The earliest civilization warned us this day would come" and then all hell breaks loose. The aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy is thrown up by a giant wave and lands upside down on the White House. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel cracks and the dome of St. Peter's falls down and rolls over a bunch of people. Buildings burn and whole cities slide into the sea. It's digital animation at its finest.
All this is loosely based on amateur archeoastronomy, alternative interpretations of mythology, numerological constructions, and alleged prophecies from extraterrestrial beings. Terence McKenna got the ball rolling in 1975 with his book "The Invisible Landscape—Mind Hallucinogens and The I Ching." McKenna experimented with many psychotropic substances including LSD and wrote and spoke publicly about his experiences.
In 1993 he propounded his Novelty Theory in a book called "True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise." The Novelty Theory says that events of any given time are related to events of other times. He developed a computer program to predict major shifts in human evolution. His program came up with the next major event in November 2012. When he discovered that his date came close to the end of a major Maya time interval one month later, he adjusted his program to make the dates match.
The Maya were the great civilization of Central America and the Yucatan from roughly 250 BCE to the Spanish conquest in the 16th Century. The greatest flowering of their science and arts was between the years 250 and 900. The Maya people still inhabit this area today and many of the old religious practices and myths are even now remembered and re-enacted in their villages (see The Maya Cosmos by Linda Schele and David Freidel, 1993). The Maya developed an intricate set of calendars one of which was The Long Count. This is a linear calendar which starts counting on August 11, 3114 BCE and ends on December 21, 2012. Such a date would certainly be important to the time-conscious Maya and they would mark the event with celebrations and sacrifices, but they never considered it to be the end of the world. In fact, their monuments and books note other dates far before 3114 BCE and far after 2012. The most that today's Maya look forward to is the next rain for their crops.
So all the hype about the movie is just that. There is not a shred of evidence for any cataclysmic event. For more reading by real archeologists, go to decipherment.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/q-a-about-2012/ and an article in the Salt Lake Tribune at www.sltrib.com/Nation%20and%20World/ci_13534048.
Janice Van Cleve, MA, resides in Seattle, Washington and is the author of the book "Eighteen Rabbit: The Intimate Life and Tragic Death of a Maya God-King."