HOUSTON - When it comes to so-called Mayan predictions about the end of the world, a new archaeological discovery underscores what a University of Houston scholar has been saying all along.
Scientists recently found the oldest known Mayan calendar in Guatemala. They say it doesn’t end on December 21, 2012, but continues well beyond.
Even before that discovery was announced, UH graduate student Carminia Martinez told FOX 26 the Mayan people don’t believe time ends when the calendar stops.
“Their ideas are rooted in cyclical time,” said Martinez. “And so at the end of an era, the oral traditions that continue represent a regeneration of humanity.”
Martinez was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to live with the Mayan people for almost a year, documenting their culture as the calendar rolls over.
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Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
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lord Martiya wrote:Good: more time to sell bunkers to the wackos.
Haha. I have a sister-in- law who skews a little that way. Love her like my own sister, but she has bought into the end of the world scenerio hook, line and sinker.
Didn't the different Mayan cities each have their own calendar with different starting years in any case?
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And the LORD said, Let there be Bosons! Yea and let there be Bosoms too!
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lord Martiya wrote:Good: more time to sell bunkers to the wackos.
I may detest the end of the world mythos, but I can't resist making money off it. Come January 1st 2013 I'll be £500 up, I've found twen nutjobs in this town alone willing to be £50 a piece that the world doesn't end.
The sad part is, both sides think it's a safe bet
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Dude, they're idiots. That's how making money off idiots works. I mean, they assign a mythical power to a calendar ending. Calendars end every freakin' year, but ooooh it's the MAYAN calendar, surely its must thus have mythical powers!
Because the universe cares so much about human notions of timekeeping.
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
I once heard a radio interview with a crackpot who believed that, unless we changed to a 28-day, 13-month calendar, disaster would befall humanity. He said that the was because we were forcing ourselves into a cycle that is not harmonious with nature's own cycles.
He couldn't say when disaster would strike, or what the disaster would be (just that it would probably end the world, somehow), or why methods of tracking the passage of time had anything to do with disaster, but that just comes with being a crackpot.
I remember once watching some History Channel bullshit documentary about the pyramids, and how if you measured some of the passages in the Great Pyramid using inches (a unit the Egyptians would never have even known about), there is a branch right about 0AD, and then the passage ends around 2000AD. This of course somehow implied that the world would also end around 2000AD.
People get intellectually invested in all sorts of crazy ideas. Because by and large, people are gullible idiots with no critical thinking skills.
"You were doing OK until you started to think."
-ICANT, creationist from evcforum.net
Rahvin wrote:I remember once watching some History Channel bullshit documentary about the pyramids, and how if you measured some of the passages in the Great Pyramid using inches (a unit the Egyptians would never have even known about), there is a branch right about 0AD, and then the passage ends around 2000AD. This of course somehow implied that the world would also end around 2000AD.
Von Däniken for the win. I've scrounged a lot of Call of Cthulhu RPG scenarios out of him and his disciples.
And I don't think that he is an actual crackpot himself, he's more like a con artist cashing in on the credulity of the 'common' man.
Korto wrote:They're betting you £50 that the world is going to end?
How do they expect to collect?
I have no idea, I believe they are working on the assumption of "haha, he doesn't realise it's all going to end, making this bet with him lets us laugh at him som more for his lack of vision."
Although really, I don't care WHAT they think. They were dumb enough to make the bets, and dumb enough that they all signed a written version in front of witnesses (ok, the bar staff, but good enough for me). January is going to be a damn good month in 2013, especially as that £500 will do nicely as spending money for the Arizona field trip.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
This was actually fantastic timing for me-I was in the middle of my Mesoamerica unit with my 9th graders when this news story hit (literally had done the lesson on the Mayans the day before, and yes, five minutes of it is explaining the calendar thing) It's nice being able to pull up an MSNBC article on the SmartBoard and saying "See, Mr. Petersen's right, we've got at least another 7000 years, better reschedule those end of the year parties."
Hopefully my students will not grow up to be gullible idiots Eternal Freedom will fund future vacations off of.
"I'm sorry, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that your inability to use the brain evolution granted you is any of my fucking concern."
"You. Stupid. Shit." Victor desperately wished he knew enough Japanese to curse properly. "Davions take alot of killing." -Grave Covenant Founder of the Cult of Weber
Eternal_Freedom wrote:
Although really, I don't care WHAT they think. They were dumb enough to make the bets, and dumb enough that they all signed a written version in front of witnesses (ok, the bar staff, but good enough for me). January is going to be a damn good month in 2013, especially as that £500 will do nicely as spending money for the Arizona field trip.
You're my hero.
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
Eternal_Freedom wrote:
Although really, I don't care WHAT they think. They were dumb enough to make the bets, and dumb enough that they all signed a written version in front of witnesses (ok, the bar staff, but good enough for me). January is going to be a damn good month in 2013, especially as that £500 will do nicely as spending money for the Arizona field trip.
You're my hero.
Why thank you
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Don't know who this grad student thinks he is, but anyone who knows anything about Maya archeology and calendrics has known for a very, very long time that the calendar isn't going to end for literally octillions of years.
I didn't. This is actually, genuinely new, after all. That the Mayans bothered with calenders going even further, that is - not that their calenders didn't actually end in 2012. It's like having a calendar for next year, or the year thereafter - most people don't have it, not because they think they won't be around anymore, but because they simply don't need it.
SoS:NBAGALE Force "Destiny and fate are for those too weak to forge their own futures. Where we are 'supposed' to be is irrelevent." - Sir Nitram
"The world owes you nothing but painful lessons" - CaptainChewbacca
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." - Wilhelm Stekel
"In 1969 it was easier to send a man to the Moon than to have the public accept a homosexual" - Broomstick Divine Administration - of Gods and Bureaucracy (Worm/Exalted)
Frank Hipper wrote:Don't know who this grad student thinks he is, but anyone who knows anything about Maya archeology and calendrics has known for a very, very long time that the calendar isn't going to end for literally octillions of years.
Octillions.
"Hey, get this guys, these people have a CYCLICAL understanding of time! Isn't that so fascinating and unusual?"
But actually I'm not sure how exactly the Long Count could end, unless you mean that eventually they'd reach the limits of the numbers that the Maya had words for.
Invited by the new age, the elegant Sailor Neptune!
I mean, how often am I to enter a game of riddles with the author, where they challenge me with some strange and confusing and distracting device, and I'm supposed to unravel it and go "I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE" and take great personal satisfaction and pride in our mutual cleverness?
Bakustra wrote:But actually I'm not sure how exactly the Long Count could end, unless you mean that eventually they'd reach the limits of the numbers that the Maya had words for.
That already happened. The Mayan calendar only had names for the first four orders of magnitude (there's a named fifth order of magnitude but it was backformed later)
The 2012 nonsense happens because mayan dates we've found have all been recorded in five orders of magnitude (in days, base 20), and in december this year it will need to roll over to a sixth.
There are, however, what are called "distance dates" in mayan carvings. A distance date is how the mayans recorded future events, they consisted of the date of the carving and another date that needed to be added to the first to give the final date. There are distance dates found in mayan carvings that refer to things that are still thousands of years from now.
Bakustra wrote:But actually I'm not sure how exactly the Long Count could end, unless you mean that eventually they'd reach the limits of the numbers that the Maya had words for.
That already happened. The Mayan calendar only had names for the first four orders of magnitude (there's a named fifth order of magnitude but it was backformed later)
The 2012 nonsense happens because mayan dates we've found have all been recorded in five orders of magnitude (in days, base 20), and in december this year it will need to roll over to a sixth.
There are, however, what are called "distance dates" in mayan carvings. A distance date is how the mayans recorded future events, they consisted of the date of the carving and another date that needed to be added to the first to give the final date. There are distance dates found in mayan carvings that refer to things that are still thousands of years from now.
Except that they did have at least four units larger than the b'ak'tun which are common enough to be named by archaeologists, and there are individual inscriptions with eight more and nineteen more units. And we won't enter the next sixth-level unit/piktun until either 2407 or 4772, depending on whether it was axiomatic in the Long Count that piktun only lasted for fourteen b'ak'tun. So even with stuff the Maya computed themselves without any extrapolation, the Long Count extends for two octillion years total.
Invited by the new age, the elegant Sailor Neptune!
I mean, how often am I to enter a game of riddles with the author, where they challenge me with some strange and confusing and distracting device, and I'm supposed to unravel it and go "I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE" and take great personal satisfaction and pride in our mutual cleverness?
My mother-in-law bought into this Mayan calendar stuff but at least she admits she doesn't know what the "last sun" means. She's sure it's the end of the world. I tend to roll my eyes about all this weirdness and I'm sure nothing earth-shattering will happen. I remember all the hysteria about the millenium (never mind that according to some calendars it took place in the 50s) and Y2K. I stayed home that night as I was burned out but I was fascinated when the news channel was showing various New Years celebrations around the world. I began to realize that the end of the world mythos was bullshit and I had a lot of rethinking to do on a lot of things...
-- Asuka
