December 21, 2012. Doomsday. You may have heard this year’s winter solstice will coincide with an apocalypse forewarned by the ancient Mayan calendar, but this infamous “prophecy” is simply a misinterpretation of the pre-Columbian civilization’s history and culture.
Supported by pseudo-science and popular superstition, the myth of the Mayan prophecy has been exploited for commercial reasons – to promote movies and generate tourism. In reality the Maya did not forecast the apocalypse; the date simply marks a shift in time-cycles in their elaborate calendar system.
The Maya have inhabited south-east Mexico and Central America for millennia. The Classic period from around 250 to 900 A.D. marked the high point of their sophisticated civilization, while around ten million Mayan descendants remain in the region to this day.
Advanced astronomers, the Maya devised a cyclical calendar that ran for 52 years, approximately one human lifespan at the time. To account for more long-term events, they created the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, which began on the mythical Mayan creation date of 3114 B.C. and runs for 5,126 years.
Inscribed in stone 1,300 years ago, near modern-day Tabasco, the date of December 21, 2012 marks the end of the first 5,126-year cycle. Yet the Maya believed that time started and ended with regularity and without cataclysmic incident. The end of the current cycle merely heralds the beginning of the next.
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