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The heaviest crustacean ever found was a lobster weighing 19 kg (42 lb), caught in 1934. |
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Apocalypse 2012? Some say ancient records foretell end of the world
Posted on Wednesday, January 16, 2008 (CST) by Thoth
 Could the end of the world be just four years away? A subculture has formed around the possibility, saying several prophecies predict some sort of apocalypse in or around 2012. It has been discussed online, analyzed in several new books and covered in the media.
The date of doomsday, based on the Mayan calendar, has been set as Dec. 12, 2012. If the calendar began on Aug. 11, 3114 B.C., as many researchers contend, then its "long cycle" would end on that day. The ancient Mayan civilization thrived between roughly 1800 BC and 1450 AD in Central and South America where the ruins remain of the cities they built, including monumental pyramids. They are recognized for their knowledge of astronomy and precise calendars.
The Mayans had different calendars, which were used in combination. The typical annual calendar was 260 days, synchronized with a 365-day calendar. Another calendar known as the Long Count was developed to mark longer periods of time, running for the equivalent of 5,125 years. The Mayan calendar isn't in widespread use outside of Guatemala, though others are interested in revitalizing it, said Keith Prufer, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico.
He said the
end of the calendar's long cycle does not imply an apocalypse, but
rather an anniversary similar to the millennium, though for a period of
more than 5,000 years.
"It's not the end of the world," he said.
That hasn't stopped people
from making both ominous and positive connections between the restart
of the Mayan calendar and other phenomena predicted to happen around
the same time.
For instance, the winter
solstice is on Dec. 21, and in the year 2012, a solar maximum also is
expected to occur. At maximum, the Sun can have many sunspots and many
more large flares and solar storms, said Karen Masters, a postdoctoral
researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
These events release
charged particles from the surface of the Sun, which travel out into
space. Those that hit the Earth can cause disruption to power grids,
damage satellites and other electronics, she said.
"So solar maximum can be
inconvenient — but I don't think it's going to end the world," she
said. "The date matching the Mayan 'end of the world' prediction is
just a coincidence — after all, lots of things are going to happen in
2012."
There is an 11-year cycle between the current solar minimum and the solar maximum NASA predicts will come in 2011 or 2012.
Some people are also
anticipating a reversal of the magnetic poles soon. But there are at
least hundreds of thousands of years between reversals, and scientists
are not sure when it will happen again.
However, signs of a
reversal have been observed for several years, including the magnetic
field weakening, NASA has reported. If the trend continues, the
magnetic field could collapse then reverse.
The magnetic field protects
the planet from some cosmic radiation, which has the potential to knock
out power grids and scramble communications systems.
The gradual process of a
reversal would alter the direction compasses point, but most modern
navigation equipment does not rely on the poles. However, some animal
migration patterns might.
Other debatable 2012 prophecies include:
- The nuclear World War III predicted by Nostradamus, a physician in 1500s France noted for his future predictions
-
A global peak in energy production, which would disrupt industrialized civilization as outlined in the Olduvai theory
-
Technological creation of
smarter-than-human intelligence, making computers the source of
invention in a theory known as the Singularity
Interest in the 2012 date
has spread from the New Age movement to the mainstream, according to
Michael Barkun, a political science professor at Syracuse University
who has written books on millennial and apocalyptic topics.
The date has captured the
attention of people just as the millennium or Y2K did, but the year
2000 came and went without disorder, he said.
The fascination, he said,
could be the "desire to believe time and history have some sort of
order and plan, and events are not random."
As such, he said, the date is not chosen at random, but for some reason.
"Those who advocate it don't advocate it on some kind of notion of blind faith," he said.
The belief that the world
is going to end could have negative consequences if many people begin
to hold it and make life changes based on it, he said.
It's difficult to determine
how many people believe, but there don't appear to be any organized
groups built around the belief that the world will end in 2012, he said.
David Frankfurter,
professor of religious studies and history at the University of New
Hampshire, said people only tend to get involved in such group activity
if they're already feeling separate from the rest of society and have a
leader who they believe has access to other-worldly knowledge.
Also, he said, such groups tend to have an idea of how they'll live through an apocalypse.
He said it is "manifestly preposterous" that the world will end in four years.
The idea that the dates of
all apocalyptic writing would agree is virtually impossible since many
cultures have different concepts of time, said Frankfurter, who this
year is a fellow with the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at
Harvard University.
There are many ambiguous
writings which can be read in different ways, including those of
Nostradamus and the Bible's book of Revelations, he said.
"None of them actually say the world is going to end," he said.
Even if an ancient text did
predict the end of time, he added, there is no evidence there were
authorities on the subject with any more access to such knowledge than
people have now.
Apocalyptic literature was
written when people were looking for ways to understand God's plan, he
said. They were widely read because people believed true revelations
came from God to the writer.
Copyright: Citizen.com
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Re: Apocalypse 2012? Some say ancient records foretell end of the world
by BrotherGee on Wednesday, January 16, 2008 (CST)
(User Info | Send a Message | Journal) | Well, it's a fluff piece, with the usual pooh-poohing at the end, but at least it's being discussed. I can see this becoming a larger topic in the next couple of years. I just don't want to see The Controllers being the ones "explaining" it away to the sleeping masses..
WE'VE got to be the ones who educate our brothers and sisters. The world as we know it is going to change drastically. It's changing as I write this.
And they need to stop bringing up Y2K. The reason why Y2K didn't blow up in our faces was because programmers the world over inventoried and upgraded every piece of code they could find. There was a lot of hard work behind-the-scenes that was responsible for Y2K being a non-event.
However, humans don't have a lot of control over 2012...unless we gain control of ourselves first.
~~ G
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Re: Apocalypse 2012? Some say ancient records foretell end of the world
by wrenweyland on Monday, July 21, 2008 (CDT)
(User Info | Send a Message) | With everything that is being said about 2012 being the end of the World. I think it is a lot more likely that it will be the end of the World as we know it. There are any number of disasters from comets/meteors, war, famines, diseases, etc... that could be considered to be the end of the World. With all of the past myths/legends that tell about the end of past worlds I believe they were primarily talking about the end of past civilizations, or if you prefer Ages. I highly doubt that out of the hundreds of thousands of years that homosapiens sapiens have been on this planet that we only started a civilization around 6,000 years ago. There was a show on, I believe The Learning Channel (or a similar channel), that dealt with life on Earth if humans disappeared from the planet. It showed that most of our current technology would disappear within a matter of decades. So if our current Age ended, how much of our current history and technology would be remembered anywhere as anything other than as myths and legends?
Most of our infrastructure will crumble to dust if it's not maintained within a few decades because the concrete that "modern man" has developed is far more temporary than what was developed by "ancient man". I'm also not very convinced about how long plastic will be around because I've seen how fast things made of plastic, for example trash cans, seem to degrade from constant exposure to the elements.
If humans do survive the next end of the Age our descendants might believe that we didn't exist because there would be virtually nothing left of our achievements. We might be relegated to the realm of myths and legends while the ancient monument builders would be considered to be more recent than we were because proof of their existence would still be around. |
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