So why are the ancient Mayan readings so well believed?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Actually there are a few inscriptions that refer to events well beyond 2012. One referred to the late 41st century IIRC. So yeah.

[Simon_Jester]

Mayan civilization had historical records stretching back far enough into the past that it is quite sure they could conceive of years after 2012.

However, since the Mayan civilization reached its peak and collapsed some time before 1000 AD, and the survivors suffered a near-total annihilation of their traditional culture (and calendar) in the 1500s... it is highly unlikely that they would have bothered making calendars that went past 2012. It's not like we have lots of calendars around our homes or official buildings that reach past the year 2500 or 3000.

But it would be grossly stupid to suppose that we are unable to imagine years that far in the future, or unable to describe them, or that we somehow think the world will end in the year 9999 because we use four-digit numbers to represent the year and they aren't long enough to stretch more than another eight thousand years or so into the future.

[loomer]

Even in the conspiracy world, no one really took 2012 seriously except a handful of wingnuts. 99% of the media about it was because it's a hobby and it was fun to think about for the people involved. Even those who had serious concerns were usually more worried about mass public chaos because of the media hype than they were about the end of the baktun, or about trouble starting from the extreme fringe who were convinced this was the end of days.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Actually there are a few inscriptions that refer to events well beyond 2012. One referred to the late 41st century IIRC. So yeah.

Which is why the word "supposedly" was used. All in all, the whole business was utter horseshit in my opinion.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Even in the conspiracy world, no one really took 2012 seriously except a handful of wingnuts. 99% of the media about it was because it's a hobby and it was fun to think about for the people involved. Even those who had serious concerns were usually more worried about mass public chaos because of the media hype than they were about the end of the baktun, or about trouble starting from the extreme fringe who were convinced this was the end of days.

One of those handful was my then-supervisor, who believed every wackjob theory going. Same man by the way, who justified Zimmerman and Ferguson, while adamantly opposing the death penalty as being against God's will.

So, one can understand my annoyance.

[Vendetta]

They aren't well-believed, for one thing. Hell, the whole "world will end in 2012" thing is actually based on a misinterpretation of Mayan readings; there is no evidence the Mayans themselves actually believed the world would end in 2012 (2012 just happened to mark the end of one of their measurements of time). The only modern people who buy into that are a very small, very fringe group of crazies/obsessives, usually New Age type people using it as an excuse to criticize modern society.

Also, the Mayans didn't have telescopes at all. Even if they did, it wouldn't be made from mud and melted sand. Because that doesn't make any sense.

It wasn't even the end of their measurement of time, it was the point at which they would have incremented the largest significant digit from 13 to 14* (and apparently reached the date when the last incarnation of the world had ended, but there was no indication they thought that would happen again on the same date).

Mayans had a funny way of doing future dates though, they wrote the current date and the date to add to the current date, not the actual future date intended. Some of the ones in carvings that have been found won't come for millennia yet.



* All but the second least significant digit was base 20. The second lsd was base 18.

[Iroscato]

It was literally the equivalent of today's phone calenders only going up to 2040 or so - for them it was soooo stupidly far off they had no reason to feel compelled to plan a calendar ahead that far.
Shit, even today most people have difficulty comprehending a century in the future. Why would you think thousands of years in advance when your life consisted of farming, raising a family and watching the occasional sacrifice?

*Disclaimer; I don't know a great deal about Mayan culture. I get 'em mixed up with the Aztecs and Incans as well, because I'm an uneducated swine *

[NecronLord]

The catholics who came up with the calendar you use were not appreciably more sophisticated for the average person, who was still a farmer there too; it's not an issue of primitive lifestyle, just an aesthetic belief in cycles being beautiful and significant.

[Ziggy Stardust]

It wasn't even the end of their measurement of time, it was the point at which they would have incremented the largest significant digit from 13 to 14* (and apparently reached the date when the last incarnation of the world had ended, but there was no indication they thought that would happen again on the same date).

Yeah, I realize now my post was poorly written, I meant to say "end of one of their UNITS of measurement of time", but even that was a poor way to phrase it. 2012 was just the end of the 13th "baktun" (although, incidentally, IIRC we don't actually know the words the Mayans used for it, as it is represented only numerically, and the name is one adapted by modern scholars. Though it's been a while since I read about this so I may be off on the facts a tad). The baktun is one of their units of measurement of time, but they repeat cyclically, with 20 baktuns to a "piktun", which are in turn nested within a larger unit of time, which are nested within another, which are nested within yet another (the highest order of their time hierarchy we know of, with one lasting approximately 63 million years!).

In any case, 2012 is roughly the end of the 13th baktun in our current piktun, and it just so happens that the end of the 13th baktun in the PREVIOUS piktun marked the beginning of "Creation" (as in Earth and the life on it). There is no evidence that the 2012 date was anything more than the lapsing of a specifying period of time since Creation, rather than having any apocalyptic implications. In fact, I believe there are only two known inscriptions of the 2012 date, but neither mentions any specific context to it. And you're right, there are other known inscriptions of dates well beyond that; there is one that celebrates the end of the current piktun, which is somewhere around the year 5000 by our calendar.

[Raw Shark]

MOM: Do you think the world's going to end this year? Y'know, the Mayan thing?

ME: No, that's dumb. People thought the world would end in the year 1000, and as we can all see, that might've been for the best but didn't happen.

MOM: But what if it does?

ME: Then we're all dead anyway. What do you care? You've got emphysema.

MOM: I worry about you.

ME: Do you know what it would take to actually destroy the world? Even if we managed to blow it apart somehow, it'd just kill most life as we know it except probably the roaches and some kinds of bacteria and then pull itself back together in a spherical shape because of gravity unless the pieces reached escape velocity.

MOM: I don't know what that means.

ME: Okay, forget about that. Honestly, the only reason I'd even care is because it's the day before my birthday. If it all went up in flames the day after, I would still be drunk and dancing until Porky Pig says, "T-t-that's all, folks!"