Have you ever met someone who believed in the Mayan apocalypse nonsense?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Not in real life, though I recall DWTL was a believer in it.

[Antonio the Sixth]

though I recall DWTL was a believer in it.

ROFL


As for the OP, no. Fortunately.

[Northeast Rep Snowball]

though I recall DWTL was a believer in it.

ROFL


As for the OP, no. Fortunately.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=82933.0

Man, I really starting to believe this poll shift and/or Obama causing nuclear holocaust thing

My fears about 2012 seems to be getting worse lately

No matter what, 12/20/12 is going to be one hell of a day

[Antonio the Sixth]

And I thought for all this time that he couldn't have fallen any deeper in stupidity.

[GMantis]

Not really, but I have a friend who believed all the New Age nonsense about a sudden change occurring on this day.

[Northeast Rep Snowball]

No sane person would believe this

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

No sane person would believe this

Well yes, but this is DWTL we're talking about.

[Northeast Rep Snowball]

exactly

[Vosem]

Can't think of anyone off the top of my head. I have met somebody who believed Harold Camping...twice.

[angus]

Not in real life, though I recall DWTL was a believer in it.

Nonsense?  These guys predicted a terrestrial/galactic/solar alignment over a thousand of years ago.  While my ancestors and yours were crawling around in muck and figuring out ways to sell yet another shard of the True Cross for a florin or two.  

Oh, I should go on a diatribe about the Maya and their advanced astronomical skills and such, but I've done so on this forum many times before, usually not in threads about their apocalypse.  Look, whether or not you want to believe that today is the end of the "Water World" and the beginning of the "Air World" is another issue.  Obviously, that mysticism is a subjective matter, and all cultures have their mysticism, but to dismiss the apocalypse of a rare astronomical event one thousands of years hence by a culture whose technological achievements include the fabrication of tools that are harder than iron; the invention of high strength durable materials of construction including the fabrication of hydraulic cement for producing cast-in-place concrete; the development of the Maya arch as a structural mechanism to create multi-story and clear span structures, elevated concrete paved roads; long-span bridges, and advanced water management methodologies that permitted the Maya urban civilization to survive in a seasonal desert environment.  And who did all this without the wheel and without horses or camels or other beasts of burden larger than a Chihuahua is extremely bigoted and ethnocentric and narrow-minded.  

I voted yes by the way.

This Fourth Sun/Fifth Sun seems a little silly on some level, but then so does a virgin giving birth, and hundreds of millions of people around the world believe that stuff, just as I'm sure that many ancient MesoAmerican peoples suscribed to the theory that Chac would welcome the end of the Fourth Sun and rejoice the beginning of the Fifth Sun.

No, I don't believe the fact that some really weird stuff happened today has anything to do with that galactic alignment, but I can assure that I believe in those reasonably scientific astronomical portions of the apocalypse.  Moreover, I stand in humility and in reverence of a people that were able to predict the alignment with such precision such a long time ago.

[Northeast Rep Snowball]

Not in real life, though I recall DWTL was a believer in it.

Nonsense?  These guys predicted a terrestrial/galactic/solar alignment over a thousand of years ago.  While my ancestors and yours were crawling around in muck and figuring out ways to sell yet another shard of the True Cross for a florin or two. 

Oh, I should go on a diatribe about the Maya and their advanced astronomical skills and such, but I've done so on this forum many times before, usually not in threads about their apocalypse.  Look, whether or not you want to believe that today is the end of the "Water World" and the beginning of the "Air World" is another issue.  Obviously, that mysticism is a subjective matter, and all cultures have their mysticism, but to dismiss the apocalypse of a rare astronomical event one thousands of years hence by a culture whose technological achievements include the fabrication of tools that are harder than iron; the invention of high strength durable materials of construction including the fabrication of hydraulic cement for producing cast-in-place concrete; the development of the Maya arch as a structural mechanism to create multi-story and clear span structures, elevated concrete paved roads; long-span bridges, and advanced water management methodologies that permitted the Maya urban civilization to survive in a seasonal desert environment.  And who did all this without the wheel and without horses or camels or other beasts of burden larger than a Chihuahua is extremely bigoted and ethnocentric and narrow-minded. 

I voted yes by the way.

This Fourth Sun/Fifth Sun seems a little silly on some level, but then so does a virgin giving birth, and hundreds of millions of people around the world believe that stuff, just as I'm sure that many ancient MesoAmerican peoples suscribed to the theory that Chac would welcome the end of the Fourth Sun and rejoice the beginning of the Fifth Sun.

No, I don't believe the fact that some really weird stuff happened today has anything to do with that galactic alignment, but I can assure that I believe in those reasonably scientific astronomical portions of the apocalypse.  Moreover, I stand in humility and in reverence of a people that were able to predict the alignment with such precision such a long time ago.

Nothing happens today, the only thing that is of note is that we are in a new cycle, hell the mayans predicted thing after today, so there is no way that the apocalypse could happen. There is no planetary alignment, no solar alignment and we don't hit the galatic plane for another 30 million years. If the mayans themselves don't believe it, and science doesn't support it, then there is no logic in it.

[Smid]

No, I haven't met anyone who actually believed it. Which makes it a bit, well, self-gratifying, to be patting ourselves on the back and congratulating ourselves for being smart enough to not believe it...

[minionofmidas]

No, it was all ironic.

[angus]

Nothing happens today, the only thing that is of note is that we are in a new cycle, hell the mayans predicted thing after today, so there is no way that the apocalypse could happen. There is no planetary alignment, no solar alignment and we don't hit the galatic plane for another 30 million years. If the mayans themselves don't believe it, and science doesn't support it, then there is no logic in it.

False.  There are some grammatical errors in your post, and normally that's the result of haste and I don't have a problem with it, but yours are significantly obfuscating that I cannot quite tell what you are trying to say.  Nevertheless, you make some demonstrably false statements.  First, we do not know what the ancients did or didn't believe since we cannot go inside their minds, but the physical apocalypse of the Maya did present itself.  According to NASA, the sun appeared to be in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, in what is known as the Galactic Equator, as viewed from the Earth.  The calendrical apocalypse came true as well, since the long count ended, but that would of course happen since it's just mathematical progression.  The apocalypse had a mystical quality as well.  Of that I don't claim to have any knowledge.  Whether the new era will actually be one of harmony one can only hope, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  

The Maya term “sacred tree” is an astronomical reference to the cross made by the Galactic equator and the ecliptic near the center of the galaxy. The ecliptic is the path of the Sun, as seen from the earth.  I still find it amazing that the Mayans could predict this solar event, just by looking at the stars with no telescopes, and reading that far into the future and being that mathematically perfect as to reach out thousands of years and get it right.  

You don't have to call it an apocalypse, if the term offends your sensibilities.  Apocalypse means revelation, or foretelling, and it isn't necessarily a term I would have used, except that the television specials all kept using it, so it seems to be the term of choice.  I'd simply call it a prediction.  And, as far as I can tell, it was fairly accurate, whatever you want to call it.  

Of course it's true that the prediction, or apocalypse if you prefer, had a mystical quality, as I mentioned.  There was a prediction that there would be four or five terrible years at the end of the Fourth Sun--and no doubt we had economic and military struggles these past few years, and it has been a stressful time worldwide, and some might take that as proof of the apocalypse as well, but that delves into a mysticism for which there cannot be objective proof, and I don't claim to offer any.  This Fourth Sun would then come to an end and a Fifth Sun would begin.  Whether or not you want to call today the beginning of the Fifth Sun--which, by the way, was to the Maya a time to celebrate and be happy about, despite the misinterpretations of the History Channel producers who spun it as some sort of crazy earthquake/solar flare/flood/devastation event--is up to you.  The Jell-O pudding people and others have built a marketing scheme upon this bizarre misinterpretation of the Maya apocalypse.  There is really no evidence that the ancient Maya would have approved of this weird paranoiac spin on their astronomical predictions.

The apocalypse included the astronomical feature, which happened, the calendrical feature, which necessarily came to pass, and a mystical quality as well, which no one can prove or disprove.  I sort of like recognizing the start of the Fifth Sun, and thinking that it really may be a time of harmony.  Not out of superstition, but out of hope.  I celebrate at least the possibility of a time of Peace and Love.  But whether or not that works out, the physical portions--both astronomical and calendrical--of the Maya apocalypse did happen.

[angus]

As long as we're at it, the other apocalypses, all the ones that go unreported in the popular press, have come to pass as well.  Lunations, periods of the planets, and eclipses are all recorded with astonishing accuracy.  Again, I don't encourage the use of the sensationalistic term apocalypse.  It reminds us of the Apocalypse of Saint John the Baptist, or what the protestants call the Revelation of John the Baptist.   It makes us think of some fierce snake gods whispering revelations into the ears of ancient Mesoamerican elders who were drunk of fermented maguey.  I'm sure that some of the chiefs were pulque drinkers, but that seems to have been more of a Toltec activity, and introduced to the Puuc Maya in the Toltec invasions of the early postclassic period.  

The main association I have of the Maya is their obsession with time.  It stands to reason that this would be the case, since their lives depended upon knowing about the growing season, and it was this precise understanding of celestial time that gave the ruling elite its authority.  Without going into all the details of kins and uinals and tuns and katuns and baktuns and such, suffice it to say that there were three time counting systems of the Maya.  The 260-day round, in which a specific deity is assigned to each day.  By the way, this count is still in use among some Maya.  On my second trip to Guatemala I spent two weeks in the department of Sololá, and I encountered many Caqchiquel maya who had named their children after the dieties and who time their fiestas to correspond with certain days on the 260-day count.  The old ones barely speak Spanish and the younger ones speak in the lilting accent of the highland Maya, but they all speak Spanish well enough for me to communicate with them.  Next, there's the vague year, which consists of 365 days (18 20-day months and five dead days, more or less), and which corresponds to the solar year.  Finally, there's the Long Count.  

This Long Count is the subject of all the current hype.  Some of my older texts refer to August 13, 3114 BC as the beginning of that count and to December 10, 2012 as the end.  I do remember that all the really old stelae that I've seen, for example at Tikal, used the Long Count, in which the artisans had to carve really long dates, which simply recorded the number of days that have passed since First Day.  In this way, we know the exact dates of the births and deaths of rulers, etc., and in this way, we can say that the Maya kept better records than our people back in Germania or Caledonia or Iberia.  In later years the Maya sculptors obviously tired of this exhaustive process and adopted an abbreviated version, the Short Count.  This may explain the disagreement of the dates in the last day of the Fourth Sun.  

In any case, they showed an acute understanding of astronomy.  The observatories that I've visited, Uaxactun, Copán, Chichen Itza, etc., are very impressive and painstakingly aligned with solar and lunar sequences.  Note that their vague year was just half a day off in their calculation of the solar year.  (Compare this to the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars!)  At Copán, in the Late Classic period, astronomers calculated the lunar cycle at 29.53020 days, which compares favorably to our current estimate of 29.53059 days.  In the Dresden Codex their calculations extend to 405 lunations.  In recently discovered stelae, these lunar predictions extend over centuries.  This allowed them to predict lunar eclipses accurately for over three decades, and they did so accurately, at a time when such a prediction in France or Spain would have secured you a spot on a burning stake for practicing witchcraft!  You can call all this an apocalypse if you want, although their astronomers were doing nothing other than observing and doing calculations.  Again, I think that prediction is a better word to use, even if their ruling elite made claims that the ability to calculate such events was a gift from the gods.

Moreover, they calculated with astonishing accuracy the movements of Venus, Mars, and Mercury.  Venus was of particular importance as they linked its movements with success in war.  Many decisions to attack were based on the appearance of Venus, according to surviving stelae.  This link between Venus' position and predicting the outcome of attacks reeks of mysticism, and I don't advocate it, but no more so than our own Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mythologies.  In any case, it was the ability to predict the celestial movements that awes the modern archeologists and astronomers.  It's very impressive, whether you want to call it an apocalpyse or, more precisely, a prediction based on careful observation and painstaking calculations.  Especially when you remember that a thousand years after these calculations were made, Tycho Brahe had put Johannes Keppler to the task of recording the retrograde motion of Mars expressly for the purpose of keeping the Earth in the center of the solar system, in accordance the Ptolemaic system which had been co-opted by the Roman church.  Luckily for us, Keppler was enthusiastic and went far beyond his master's assignment, so that now we have an understand as advanced as the Maya.

Anyway, I voted yes.  I believe that their predictions have been mostly right, so you all can claim to know at least one poster who believes in the "Mayan apocalypse nonsense."  

[GMantis]

False.  There are some grammatical errors in your post, and normally that's the result of haste and I don't have a problem with it, but yours are significantly obfuscating that I cannot quite tell what you are trying to say.  Nevertheless, you make some demonstrably false statements.  First, we do not know what the ancients did or didn't believe since we cannot go inside their minds, but the physical apocalypse of the Maya did present itself.  According to NASA, the sun appeared to be in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, in what is known as the Galactic Equator, as viewed from the Earth.  The calendrical apocalypse came true as well, since the long count ended, but that would of course happen since it's just mathematical progression.  The apocalypse had a mystical quality as well.  Of that I don't claim to have any knowledge.  Whether the new era will actually be one of harmony one can only hope, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  

Would you mind giving a source for this? Because this article from NASA says that such an event can't be pinpointed within a year, much less a day.

[angus]

Would you mind giving a source for this?

Sure, there are lots of them, starting with the article you posted.  I'd actually already read it, and interpreted the data as a vindication of what I have been saying.  But you can just google other images as well.  Here's a stream from the International Space Station from that day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IIVw0obOgM

You can look at the current stream here:  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-iss-stream

You can also link to a number of popular stories about this, although the popular press articles have chosen a "doomsday" headline that sells newspapers.  Remember, there was NO DOOMSDAY SCENARIO in the Maya prediction.  Just an end of one cycle and a beginning of the new one, which is to be a time of peace and harmony.  

Here is what you could see if the alignment was perfect and you were out there and the sun was somehow a different color:



Of course, this cannot be directly observed since the Sun’s brightness lights up the sky.  And because the actual timing was a little off.  Unfortunately, NASA's website is busy dealing with debunking the bizarre myths about the "end of the world" which have sprung up because of misinterpretations of the Maya Long Count.  It's good that they're doing that, but it becomes difficult to sort through it all to find the data that supports the accuracy of the prediction of galactic alignment at the end of the cycle.  Here, for example, NASA's data puts it about 6 degrees off, so you'd have to run the clock backward a few days.  It is perhaps the case that the earlier date of December 10 was a better interpretation of the Long Count's measurement.  What's a few days over a thousand years?  I still call it an excellent prediction, and like the other Maya predictions, it's accurate to within a reasonable tolerance level, given the level of technology they had to work with.