A date inscription in the
Mayan Long Count on the east side of Stela C from
Quirigua showing the date for the last Creation. It is read as
13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 8 Cumku and is usually correlated as 11 or 13 August, 3114 BCE on the
Gregorian calendar. The date of
13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in is usually correlated as 21 or 23 December 2012.
The
2012 phenomenon was a range of
eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events would occur around 21 December 2012.
This date was regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the
Mesoamerican Long Count calendar,
and as such, Mayan festivities to commemorate the date took place on 21 December 2012 in the countries that were part of the
Mayan empire (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), with main events at
Chichén Itzá in Mexico, and
Tikal in Guatemala.
Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae were
proposed as pertaining to this date, all unequivocally rejected by
mainstream scholarship. A
New Age
interpretation held that the date marked the start of a period during
which Earth and its inhabitants would undergo a positive physical or
spiritual transformation, and that 21 December 2012 would mark the beginning of a new era.
Others suggested that the date marked the
end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world included the arrival of the next
solar maximum, an interaction between Earth and the
black hole at the center of the galaxy,
or Earth's collision with
a planet called Nibiru.
Scholars from various disciplines quickly dismissed predictions of concomitant cataclysmic events as they arose. Professional
Mayanist scholars stated that no extant
classic Maya accounts forecast impending doom, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar ends in 2012 misrepresented
Maya history and culture,
while astronomers rejected the various proposed doomsday scenarios as
pseudoscience,easily refuted by elementary astronomical observations.
Mesoamerican Long Count calendar
December 2012 marked the conclusion of a
b'ak'tun—a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used in
Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Although the Long Count was most likely invented by the
Olmec,
it has become closely associated with the
Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD.
The
writing system of the classic Maya has been substantially deciphered,
meaning that a
corpus of their written and inscribed material has survived from before the
European conquest.
Unlike the 260-day
tzolk'in
still used today among the Maya, the Long Count was linear rather than
cyclical, and kept time roughly in units of 20: 20 days made a
uinal, 18 uinals (360 days) made a
tun, 20 tuns made a
k'atun, and 20 k'atuns (144,000 days or roughly 394 years) made up a
b'ak'tun. Thus, the Mayan date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 b'ak'tuns, 3 k'atuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days.
Apocalypse
There is a strong tradition of "world ages" in Mayan literature, but the
record has been distorted, leaving several possibilities open to
interpretation. According to the
Popol Vuh, a compilation of the
creation accounts of the
K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world. The
Popol Vuh
describes the gods first creating three failed worlds, followed by a
successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. In the Maya Long
Count, the previous world ended after 13 b'ak'tuns, or roughly 5,125
years. The Long Count's "zero date"
was set at a point in the past marking the end of the third world and
the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to 11 August 3114 BC
in the
proleptic Gregorian calendar.
This means that the fourth world reached the end of its 13th b'ak'tun,
or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, on 21 December 2012. In 1957, Mayanist and
astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson wrote that "the completion of a Great
Period of 13 b'ak'tuns would have been of the utmost significance to
the Maya".
In 1966,
Michael D. Coe wrote in
The Maya
that "there is a suggestion ... that Armageddon would overtake the
degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the
13th [b'ak'tun]. Thus ... our present universe [would] be annihilated
[in December 2012] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion."
Objections
Coe's interpretation was repeated by other scholars through the early 1990s.
In contrast, later researchers said that, while the end of the 13th b'ak'tun would perhaps be a cause for celebration,
it did not mark the end of the calendar.
"There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy
to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in
2012", said Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone. "The notion of a 'Great
Cycle' coming to an end is completely a modern invention."
In 1990, Mayanist scholars
Linda Schele and
David Freidel argued that the Maya "did not conceive this to be the end of creation, as many have suggested". Susan Milbrath,
curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the
Florida Museum of Natural History, stated that, "We have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012.
Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement
of Mesoamerican Studies, said, "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge
celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle", and, "The 2012
phenomenon is a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to
cash in".
"There will be another cycle", said E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the
Tulane University
Middle American Research Institute. "We know the Maya thought there was
one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea
of another one after this."
Commenting on the new calendar found at
Xultún,
one archaeologist said "The ancient Maya predicted the world would
continue – that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this.
We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that
nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset."
Several prominent individuals representing Maya of Guatemala decried
the suggestion that the world would end in the b'ak'tun 13. Ricardo
Cajas, president of the Colectivo de Organizaciones Indígenas de
Guatemala, said the date did not represent an end of humanity but that
the new cycle "supposes changes in human consciousness". Martín
Sacalxot, of the office of the
Procurador de los Derechos Humanos
(Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman, PDH), said that the end of the
calendar has nothing to do with the end of the world or the year 2012.
Prior associations
The European association of the Maya with eschatology dates back to the time of
Christopher Columbus, who was compiling a work called
Libro de las profecias during the voyage in 1502 when he first heard about the "Maia" on Guanaja, an
island off the north coast of
Honduras.
Influenced by the writings of Bishop
Pierre d'Ailly,
Columbus believed that his discovery of "most distant" lands (and, by
extension, the Maya themselves) was prophesied and would bring about the
Apocalypse. End-times fears were widespread during the early years of the
Spanish Conquest as the result of popular
astrological predictions in Europe of a second
Great Flood for the year 1524.
In the early 1900s, German scholar
Ernst Förstemann interpreted the last page of the
Dresden Codex
as a representation of the end of the world in a cataclysmic flood. He
made reference to the destruction of the world and an apocalypse, though
he made no reference to the 13th b'ak'tun or 2012 and it was not clear
that he was referring to a future event.
His ideas were repeated by archaeologist
Sylvanus Morley,
who directly paraphrased Förstemann and added his own embellishments,
writing, "Finally, on the last page of the manuscript, is depicted the
Destruction of the World ... Here, indeed, is portrayed with a graphic
touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm" in the form of a Great Flood.
These comments were later repeated in Morley's book,
The Ancient Maya, the first edition of which was published in 1946.
Mayan references to b'ak'tun 13
It is not certain what significance the classic
Maya gave to the 13th b'ak'tun.
Most classic Maya inscriptions are strictly historical and do not make any prophetic declarations.
Two items in the Mayan classical corpus, however, do mention the end of
the 13th b'ak'tun: Tortuguero Monument 6 and La Corona Hieroglyphic
Stairway 12.
Tortuguero
The
Tortuguero site, which lies in southernmost
Tabasco,
Mexico, dates from the 7th century AD and consists of a series of
inscriptions mostly in honor of the contemporary ruler Bahlam Ajaw. One
inscription, known as Tortuguero Monument 6, is the only inscription
known to refer to b'ak'tun 13 in any detail. It has been partially
defaced; Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod have given this
translation:
- tzuhtzjo:m uy-u:xlaju:n pik
- chan ajaw u:x uni:w
- uhto:m il[?]
- ye'ni/ye:n bolon yokte'
- ta chak joyaj
|
- It will be completed the 13th b'ak'tun.
- It is 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in
- and it will happen a 'seeing'[?].
- It is the display of B'olon-Yokte'
- in a great "investiture".
|
Very little is known about the god Bolon Yokte'. According to an article by Mayanists Markus Eberl and Christian Prager in
British Anthropological Reports,
his name is composed of the elements "nine", 'OK-te' (the meaning of
which is unknown), and "god". Confusion in classical period inscriptions
suggests that the name was already ancient and unfamiliar to
contemporary scribes.
He also appears in inscriptions from
Palenque,
Usumacinta, and
La Mar as a god of war, conflict, and the underworld. In one
stele
he is portrayed with a rope tied around his neck, and in another with
an incense bag, together signifying a sacrifice to end a cycle of years.
Based on observations of modern Mayan rituals, Gronemeyer and MacLeod
claim that the stela refers to a celebration in which a person
portraying Bolon Yokte' K'uh was wrapped in ceremonial garments and
paraded around the site.
They note that the association of Bolon Yokte' K'uh with b'ak'tun 13
appears to be so important on this inscription that it supersedes more
typical celebrations such as "erection of stelae, scattering of incense"
and so forth. Furthermore, they assert that this event was indeed
planned for 2012 and not the 7th century. Mayanist scholar
Stephen Houston
contests this view by arguing that future dates on Mayan inscriptions
were simply meant to draw parallels with contemporary events, and that
the words on the stela describe a contemporary rather than a future
scene.
La Corona
In April–May 2012, a team of archaeologists unearthed a previously unknown inscription on a stairway at the
La Corona site in
Guatemala. The inscription, on what is known as Hieroglyphic Stairway 12, describes the establishment of a royal court in
Calakmul
in 635 AD, and compares the then-recent completion of 13 k'atuns with
the future completion of the 13th b'ak'tun. It contains no speculation
or prophecy as to what the scribes believed would happen at that time.
Dates beyond b'ak'tun 13
Mayan inscriptions occasionally mention predicted future events or
commemorations that would occur on dates far beyond the completion of
the 13th b'ak'tun. Most of these are in the form of "distance dates";
Long Count dates together with an additional number, known as a Distance
Number, which when added to them makes a future date. On the west panel
at the
Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of text projects forward to the 80th 52-year
Calendar Round from the coronation of the ruler
K'inich Janaab' Pakal.
Pakal's accession occurred on 9.9.2.4.8, equivalent to 27 July 615 AD
in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The inscription begins with Pakal's
birthdate of 9.8.9.13.0 (24 March,
603 AD Gregorian) and then adds the Distance Number 10.11.10.5.8 to it, arriving at a date of 21 October 4772 AD, more than 4,000 years after Pakal's time.
Another example is Stela 1 at
Coba which marks the date of creation as
13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0,
or nineteen units above the b'ak'tun. According to Linda Schele, these
13s represent "the starting point of a huge odometer of time", with each
acting as a zero and resetting to 1 as the numbers increase. Thus this inscription anticipates the current universe lasting at least 20
21×13×360 days, or roughly 2.687×10
28 years; a time span equal to 2 quintillion times the
age of the universe
as determined by cosmologists. Others have suggested, however, that
this date marks creation as having occurred after that time span.
In 2012, researchers announced the discovery of a series of Mayan astronomical tables in
Xultún, Guatemala which plot the movements of the Moon and other astronomical bodies over the course of 17 b'ak'tuns.
New Age beliefs
Many assertions about the year 2012 form part of
Mayanism, a non-codified collection of New Age beliefs about ancient Maya wisdom and spirituality.
The term is distinct from "
Mayanist", used to refer to an academic scholar of the Maya.
Archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni
says that while the idea of "balancing the cosmos" was prominent in
ancient Maya literature, the 2012 phenomenon does not draw from those
traditions. Instead, it is bound up with American concepts such as the
New Age movement,
millenarianism, and the belief in
secret knowledge from distant times and places. Established themes found in 2012 literature include "suspicion towards mainstream
Western culture",
the idea of spiritual evolution, and the possibility of leading the
world into the New Age by individual example or by a group's joined
consciousness. The general intent of this literature is not to warn of
impending doom but "to foster counter-cultural sympathies and eventually
socio-political and 'spiritual' activism".
Aveni, who has studied New Age and
search for extraterrestrial intelligence
(SETI) communities, describes 2012 narratives as the product of a
"disconnected" society: "Unable to find spiritual answers to life's big
questions within ourselves, we turn outward to imagined entities that
lie far off in space or time—entities that just might be in possession
of superior knowledge".
Origins
In 1975, the ending of b'ak'tun 13 became the subject of speculation
by several New Age authors, who asserted it would correspond with a
global "transformation of consciousness". In
Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth Age of Consciousness,
Frank Waters tied Coe's original date of 24 December 2011 to astrology and the prophecies of the
Hopi,
while both
José Argüelles (in
The Transformative Vision)
and
Terence McKenna (in
The Invisible Landscape) discussed the significance of the year 2012 without mentioning a specific day.
In 1983, with the publication of
Robert J. Sharer's revised table of date correlations in the 4th edition of Morley's
The Ancient Maya, each became convinced that 21 December 2012 had significant meaning. By 1987, the year in which he organized the
Harmonic Convergence event, Arguelles was using the date 21 December 2012 in
The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology.
He claimed that on 13 August 3113 BC the Earth began a passage through a
"galactic synchronization beam" that emanated from the
center of our galaxy, that it would pass through this beam during a period of 5200
tuns
(Maya cycles of 360 days each), and that this beam would result in
"total synchronization" and "galactic entrainment" of individuals
"plugged into the Earth's electromagnetic battery" by 13.0.0.0.0 (21
December 2012). He believed that the Maya aligned their calendar to
correspond to this phenomenon.
Anthony Aveni has dismissed all of these ideas.
In 2006, author
Daniel Pinchbeck popularized New Age concepts about this date in his book
2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, linking b'ak'tun 13 to beliefs in
crop circles,
alien abduction, and personal revelations based on the use of
hallucinogenic drugs and
mediumship.
Pinchbeck claims to discern a "growing realization that materialism and
the rational, empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its
expiration date ... [w]e're on the verge of transitioning to a
dispensation of consciousness that's more intuitive, mystical and
shamanic".
Galactic alignment
There is no significant astronomical event tied to the Long Count's start date. However, its supposed end date has been tied to astronomical phenomena by
esoteric,
fringe, and
New Age literature that places great significance on
astrology, especially astrological interpretations associated with the phenomenon of
axial precession.
Chief among these ideas is the astrological concept of a "galactic
alignment", which is distinct from but related to the astronomical
concept of
occultation.
Precession
In the
Solar System, the planets and the
Sun lie roughly within the same flat plane, known as the
plane of the ecliptic. From our perspective on
Earth, the
ecliptic is the path taken by the Sun across the sky over the course of the year. The twelve
constellations that line the ecliptic are known as the
zodiacal
constellations and, annually, the Sun passes through all of them in
turn. Additionally, over time, the Sun's annual cycle appears to recede
very slowly backward by one degree every 72 years, or by one
constellation approximately every 2,160 years. This backward movement,
called "
precession", is due to a slight wobble in the Earth's axis as it spins, and can be compared to the way a
spinning top wobbles as it slows down.
Over the course of 25,800 years, a period often called a
Great Year, the Sun's path completes a full, 360-degree backward rotation through the zodiac.
In Western astrological traditions, precession is measured from the
March equinox,
one of the two annual points at which the Sun is exactly halfway
between its lowest and highest points in the sky. Presently, the Sun's
March equinox position is in the constellation
Pisces and is moving back into
Aquarius. This signals the end of one
astrological age (the Age of Pisces) and the beginning of another (the
Age of Aquarius).
Similarly, the Sun's December
solstice
position (in the northern hemisphere, the lowest point on its annual
path; in the southern hemisphere, the highest) is currently in the
constellation of
Sagittarius, one of two constellations in which the zodiac intersects with the
Milky Way.
Every year, on the December solstice, the Sun and the Milky Way, from
the surface of the Earth, appear to come into alignment, and every year,
precession causes a slight shift in the Sun's position in the Milky
Way. Given that the Milky Way is between 10° and 20° wide, it takes
between 700 and 1400 years for the Sun's December solstice position to
precess through it.
It is currently about halfway through the Milky Way, crossing the
galactic equator.
In 2012, the Sun's December solstice fell on 21 December.
Mysticism
Mystical speculations about the
precession of the equinoxes and the Sun's proximity to the center of the Milky Way appeared in
Hamlet's Mill (1969) by
Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deschend. These were quoted and expanded upon by
Terence and
Dennis McKenna in
The Invisible Landscape
(1975). The significance of a future "galactic alignment" was noted in
1991 by astrologer Raymond Mardyks, who asserted that the
winter solstice would align with the
galactic plane
in 1998/1999. He wrote that this event "only occurs once each
26,000-year cycle and would be most definitely of utmost significance to
the top flight ancient astrologers".
Astrologer Bruce Scofield notes, "The Milky Way crossing of the winter
solstice is something that has been neglected by Western astrologers,
with a few exceptions. Charles Jayne made a very early reference to it,
and in the 1970s Rob Hand mentioned it in his talks on precession but
didn't elaborate on it. Ray Mardyks later made a point of it, and after
that
John [Major] Jenkins, myself, and Daniel Giamario began to talk about it."
Adherents to the idea, following a theory first proposed by
Munro Edmonson, allege that the Maya based their calendar on observations of the
Great Rift or Dark Rift, a band of dark dust clouds in the Milky Way, which, according to some scholars, the Maya called the
Xibalba be or "Black Road".
John Major Jenkins claims that the Maya were aware of where the
ecliptic intersected the Black Road and gave this position in the sky a
special significance in their cosmology.
According to Jenkins, precession will align the Sun precisely with the galactic equator at the 2012 winter solstice.
Jenkins claimed that the classical Maya anticipated this conjunction
and celebrated it as the harbinger of a profound spiritual transition
for mankind.
New Age proponents of the galactic alignment hypothesis argue that,
just as astrology uses the positions of stars and planets to make claims
of future events, the Maya plotted their calendars with the objective
of preparing for significant world events.
Jenkins attributes the insights of ancient Maya
shamans about the
galactic center to their use of
psilocybin mushrooms,
psychoactive toads, and other
psychedelics.
Jenkins also associates the
Xibalba be with a "world tree", drawing on studies of contemporary (not ancient) Maya cosmology.
Criticism
Astronomers such as
David Morrison
argue that the galactic equator is an entirely arbitrary line and can
never be precisely drawn, because it is impossible to determine the
Milky Way's exact boundaries, which vary depending on clarity of view.
Jenkins claims he drew his conclusions about the location of the
galactic equator from observations taken at above 11,000 feet (3,400 m),
an altitude that gives a clearer image of the Milky Way than Maya had
access to.
Furthermore, since the Sun is half a degree wide, its solstice position
takes 36 years to precess its full width. Jenkins himself notes that
even given his determined location for the line of the galactic equator,
its most precise convergence with the center of the Sun already
occurred in 1998, and so asserts that, rather than 2012, the galactic
alignment instead focuses on a multi-year period centred on 1998.
There is no clear evidence that the classic Maya were aware of precession. Some Maya scholars, such as Barbara MacLeod, Michael Grofe,
Eva Hunt, Gordon Brotherston, and Anthony Aveni,
have suggested that some Mayan holy dates were timed to precessional
cycles, but scholarly opinion on the subject remains divided
. There is also little evidence, archaeological or historical, that the Maya placed any importance on solstices or equinoxes.
It is possible that only the earliest among Mesoamericans observed solstices,
but this is also a disputed issue among Mayanists.
There is also no evidence that the classic Maya attached any importance
to the Milky Way; there is no glyph in their writing system to
represent it, and no astronomical or chronological table tied to it.
Timewave zero and the I Ching
"Timewave zero" is a
numerological formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of "novelty", defined as increase over time in the
universe's interconnectedness, or
organized complexity.
According to
Terence McKenna, the universe has a
teleological attractor at the
end of time that increases interconnectedness, which would eventually reach a
singularity
of infinite complexity in 2012, at which point anything and everything
imaginable would occur simultaneously. He conceived this idea over
several years in the early to mid-1970s whilst using psilocybin
mushrooms and
DMT.
McKenna expressed "novelty" in a computer program which produces a
waveform known as "timewave zero" or the "timewave". Based on McKenna's
interpretation of the
King Wen sequence of the
I Ching, an ancient Chinese book on
divination,
the graph purports to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity's
biological and
sociocultural evolution. He believed that the events of any given time are resonantly related to the events of other times, and chose the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date of November 2012.
When he later discovered this date's proximity to the end of the 13th
b'ak'tun of the Maya calendar, he revised his hypothesis so that the two
dates matched.
The 1975 first edition of
The Invisible Landscape refers to 2012 (but no specific day during the year) only twice. In the 1993 second edition, McKenna employed Sharer's date of 21 December 2012 throughout.
Doomsday theories
The idea that the year 2012 presaged a world cataclysm, described the end of the world, or of
human civilization,
on that date became a subject of popular media speculation as the date
of 21 December 2012 approached. This idea was promulgated by many hoax
pages on the
Internet, particularly on
YouTube.
The Discovery Channel was criticized for its "quasi-documentaries"
about the subject that "sacrifice[d] accuracy for entertainment".
Other alignments
Some people interpreted the galactic alignment apocalyptically, claiming that its occurrence would somehow create a combined
gravitational effect between the Sun and the
supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy (known as
Sagittarius A*), creating havoc on Earth.
Apart from "galactic alignment" already having happened in 1998, the
Sun's apparent path through the zodiac as seen from Earth does not take
it near the true galactic center, but rather several degrees above it.
Even if this were not the case, Sagittarius A* is 30,000
light years from Earth; it would have to be more than 6 million times closer to cause any gravitational disruption to Earth's Solar System. This reading of the alignment was included on the History Channel documentary,
Decoding the Past.
John Major Jenkins complained that a science fiction writer co-authored
the documentary, and he went on to characterize it as "45 minutes of
unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism".
Some believers in a 2012 doomsday used the term "galactic alignment"
to describe a different phenomenon proposed by some scientists to
explain a pattern in
mass extinctions supposedly observed in the
fossil record.
According to
this hypothesis,
mass extinctions are not random, but recur every 26 million years. To
account for this, it suggests that vertical oscillations made by the Sun
on its
250-million-year orbit
of the galactic center cause it to regularly pass through the galactic
plane. When the Sun's orbit takes it outside the galactic plane which
bisects the
galactic disc, the influence of the
galactic tide
is weaker. However, when re-entering the galactic disc—as it does every
20–25 million years—it comes under the influence of the far stronger
"disc tides", which, according to mathematical models, increase the flux
of
Oort cloud
comets into the inner Solar System by a factor of 4, thus leading to a
massive increase in the likelihood of a devastating comet impact.
However, this "alignment" takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date.
Evidence shows that the Sun passed through the plane bisecting the
galactic disc only three million years ago and is now moving farther
above it.
A third suggested alignment was some sort of planetary
conjunction occurring on 21 December 2012; however, there was no conjunction on that date.
Multi-planet alignments did occur in both 2000 and 2010, each with no ill result for the Earth.
Jupiter is the
largest planet in the Solar System; larger than all other planets combined. When Jupiter is near
opposition,
the difference in gravitational force that the Earth experiences is
less than 1% of the force that the Earth feels daily from the Moon.
Geomagnetic reversal
Another idea tied to 2012 involved a
geomagnetic reversal (often incorrectly referred to as a
pole shift by proponents), possibly triggered by a massive
solar flare, that would release an energy equal to 100 billion
atomic bombs.
This belief was supposedly supported by observations that the Earth's
magnetic field is weakening,
which could precede a reversal of the north and south
magnetic poles, and the arrival of the next
solar maximum, which was expected sometime around 2012.
Most scientific estimates, however, say that geomagnetic reversals take between 1,000 and 10,000 years to complete
and do not start on any particular date.
Furthermore, the U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now predicts that the
solar maximum will peak in May 2013, not 2012, and that it will be fairly weak, with a below-average number of
sunspots.
In any case, there is no scientific evidence linking a solar maximum to
a geomagnetic reversal, which is driven by forces entirely within the
Earth.
Instead, a solar maximum would be mostly notable for its effects on satellite and cellular phone communications.
David Morrison attributes the rise of the solar storm idea to physicist and science popularizer
Michio Kaku, who claimed in an interview with
Fox News
that a solar peak in 2012 could be disastrous for orbiting satellites,
and to NASA's headlining a 2006 webpage as "Solar Storm Warning", a term
later repeated on several doomsday pages.
Planet X/Nibiru
Some believers in doomsday in 2012 claimed that a planet called
Planet X, or Nibiru, would collide with or pass by Earth. This idea,
which appeared in various forms since 1995, initially predicted Doomsday
in May 2003, but proponents abandoned that date after it passed without
incident. The idea originated from claims of channeling of
alien beings and is widely ridiculed. Astronomers calculated that such an object so close to Earth would be visible to anyone looking up at the night sky.
Other catastrophes
Author
Graham Hancock, in his book
Fingerprints of the Gods, interpreted Coe's remarks in
Breaking the Maya Code as evidence for the prophecy of a global cataclysm.
Filmmaker
Roland Emmerich later credited the book with inspiring his 2009
disaster film 2012.
Other speculations regarding doomsday in 2012 included predictions by the
Web Bot project,
a computer program that purports to predict the future using Internet
chatter. However, commentators have rejected the programmers' claims to
have successfully predicted natural disasters, which web chatter could
never predict, as opposed to human-caused disasters like stock market
crashes.
Also, the 2012 date has been loosely tied to the long-running concept of the
Photon Belt, which predicts a form of interaction between Earth and
Alcyone, the largest star of the
Pleiades cluster.
Critics have argued that photons cannot form belts, that the Pleiades,
located more than 400 light years away, could have no effect on Earth,
and that the Solar System, rather than getting closer to the Pleiades,
is in fact moving farther away from them.
Some media outlets tied the fact that the
red supergiant star
Betelgeuse will undergo a
supernova at some point in the future to the 2012 phenomenon.
However, while Betelgeuse is certainly in the final stages of its life,
and will die as a supernova, there is no way to predict the timing of
the event to within 100,000 years.
To be a threat to Earth, a supernova would need to be no further than
25 light years from the Solar System. Betelgeuse is roughly 600 light
years away, and so its supernova will not affect Earth.
In December 2011, NASA's
Francis Reddy issued a press release debunking the possibility of a supernova occurring in 2012.
Another claim involved
alien invasion. In December 2010, an article, first published in
examiner.com and later referenced in the English-language edition of
Pravda claimed, citing a Second
Digitized Sky Survey photograph as evidence, that SETI had detected three large spacecraft due to arrive at Earth in 2012.
Astronomer and debunker
Phil Plait noted that by using the
small-angle formula,
one could determine that if the object in the photo were as large as
claimed, it would have had to be closer to Earth than the Moon, which
would mean it would already have arrived.
In January 2011,
Seth Shostak, chief astronomer of SETI, issued a press release debunking the claims.
Public reaction
The phenomenon spread widely after coming to public notice,
particularly on the Internet. Hundreds of thousands of websites were
posted on the subject
"Ask an Astrobiologist", a
NASA public outreach website, received over 5,000 questions from the public on the subject from 2007,
some asking whether they should kill themselves, their children or their pets.
In May 2012, an
Ipsos
poll of 16,000 adults in 21 countries found that 8 percent had
experienced fear or anxiety over the possibility of the world ending in
December 2012, while an average of 10 percent agreed with the statement
"the Mayan calendar, which some say 'ends' in 2012, marks the end of the
world", with responses as high as 20 percent in
China, 13 percent in
Russia,
Turkey,
Japan and
Korea, and 12 percent in the
United States, where sales of private underground
blast shelters increased noticeably from 2009. At least one suicide was directly linked to fear of a 2012 apocalypse,
with others anecdotally reported.
A panel of scientists questioned on the topic at a plenary session at the
Astronomical Society of the Pacific
contended that the Internet played a substantial role in allowing this
doomsday date to gain more traction than previous similar panics.
Europe
eginning in 2000, the small French village of
Bugarach, population 189, began receiving visits from "esoterics"—mystic believers who had concluded that the local mountain,
Pic de Bugarach,
was the ideal location to weather the transformative events of 2012. In
2011, the local mayor, Jean-Pierre Delord, began voicing fears to the
international press that the small town would be overwhelmed by an
influx of thousands of visitors in 2012, even suggesting he might call
in the army.
[138][139] "We've seen a huge rise in visitors", Delord told
The Independent
in March 2012. "Already this year more than 20,000 people have climbed
right to the top, and last year we had 10,000 hikers, which was a
significant rise on the previous 12 months. They think Pic de Bugarach
is 'un garage à ovnis' [a garage for
UFOs].
The villagers are exasperated: the exaggerated importance of something
which they see as completely removed from reality is bewildering. After
21 December, this will surely return to normal."
In December 2012, the French government placed 100 police and
firefighters around both Bugarach and Pic de Bugarach, limiting access
to potential visitors.
Ultimately, only about 1000 visitors appeared at the height of the "event". Two
raves were foiled, 12 people had to be turned away from the peak, and 5 people were arrested for carrying weapons.
Jean Pierre Delord was criticised by members of the community for
failing to take advantage of the media attention and promote the region.
Similarly, the pyramid-like mountain of
Rtanj, in the
Serbian Carpathians,
attracted much apocalyptic attention, as many believe an artificial
pyramid structure is buried within it that would have emitted a powerful
force shield on the day, protecting those within it. Hotels around the base received up to 500 bookings apiece for rooms.
In Russia, inmates of a women's prison apparently experienced "a
collective mass psychosis" in the weeks leading up to the supposed
doomsday, while residents of a factory town near Moscow reportedly
emptied a supermarket of matches, candles, food and other supplies. The
Minister of Emergency Situations declared in response that according to
"methods of monitoring what is occurring on the planet Earth," there
would be no apocalypse in December.
When asked when the world would end in a press conference, Russian President
Vladimir Putin said, "In about
4.5 billion years."
In December 2012,
Vatican astronomer Rev
José Funes wrote in the Vatican newspaper
L'Osservatore Romano that apocalyptic theories around 2012 were "not even worth discussing".
Asia
In China, up to one thousand members of the Christian cult
Almighty God
were arrested, after claiming that the end of b'ak'tun 13 marked the
end of the world, and that it was time to overthrow Communism.
Shoppers were reported to be hoarding supplies of candles in anticipation of coming darkness, while online retailer
Taobao sold tickets to board
Noah's Ark to customers.
Bookings for wedding ceremonies on 21 December 2012 were saturated in several cities.
On 14 December 2012, a man in
Henan province attacked and wounded twenty-three children
with a knife. Authorities suspected the man had been "influenced" by the prediction of the upcoming apocalypse.
Academics in China attributed the widespread belief in the 2012
doomsday in their country to a lack of scientific literacy and a
mistrust of the government-controlled media.
The Turkish village of
Şirince, near
Ephesus,
expected to receive over 60,000 visitors on 21 December 2012, as New
Age mystics believed its "positive energy" would aid in weathering the
catastrophe
In the event, only a fraction of that number actually arrived, with a
substantial component being police and journalists, and the expected
windfall failed to materialise.
On 6 December 2012,
Australian Prime Minister
Julia Gillard delivered a hoax speech for the radio station
triple J
in which she declared "My dear remaining fellow Australians; the end of
the world is coming. Whether the final blow comes from flesh-eating
zombies, demonic hell-beasts or from the total triumph of
K-Pop, if you know one thing about me it is this - I will always fight for you to the very end."
Radio announcer
Neil Mitchell described the hoax as "immature" and pondered whether it demeaned her office.
Mexico and Central America
Those
Mesoamerican
countries that once formed part of the Mayan empire, Mexico, Guatemala,
Honduras, and El Salvador, all organized festivities to commemorate the
end of b'ak'tun 13 at the largest Mayan sites. On 21 December 2011, the
Maya town of
Tapachula in
Chiapas activated an eight-foot digital clock counting down the days until the end of b'ak'tun 13.
On 21 December 2012, major events took place at
Chichén Itzá in Mexico and
Tikal in Guatemala. In El Salvador, the largest event was held at
Tazumal, and in Honduras, at
Copán. In all of these
archaeological sites, Mayan rituals were held at dawn led by
shamans and Mayan
priests.
On the final day of b'ak'tun 13, residents of Yucatán and other
regions formerly dominated by the ancient Maya celebrated what they saw
as the dawn of a new, better era.
According with official figures from Mexico's
National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), about 50,000 people visited Mexican archaeological sites on 21 December 2012, of which, 10,000 visited Chichén Itzá in
Yucatán, 9,900 visited
Tulum in
Quintana Roo, and 8,000 visited
Palenque in
Chiapas. An additional 10,000 people visited
Teotihuacan near
Mexico City, which is not a Maya site. The main ceremony in Chichén Itzá was held at dawn in the plaza of the
Temple of Kukulkán,
one of the principal symbols of Mayan culture. The archaeological site
was opened two hours early to receive thousands of tourists, mostly
foreigners who came to participate in events scheduled for the end of
b'ak'tun 13.
The fire ceremony at Tikal was held at dawn in the main plaza of the
Temple of the Great Jaguar. The ceremony was led by Guatemalan and foreign priests. The President of Guatemala,
Otto Pérez, and of Costa Rica,
Laura Chinchilla,
participated in the event as special guests. During the ceremony the
priests asked for unity, peace and the end of discrimination and racism,
with the hope that the start of a new cycle will be a "new dawn". About
3,000 people participated in the event.
Most of these events were organized by agencies of the Mexican and
Central American governments, and their respective tourism industries
expected to attract thousands of visitors.
While Mexico is visited by about 22 million foreigners a year, the
national tourism agency expected to attract 52 million visitors in 2012
just to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatán, Quintana Roo,
Tabasco and
Campeche.
A Mayan activist group in Guatemala, Oxlaljuj Ajpop, objected to the
commercialization of the date. A spokesman from the Conference of Mayan
Ministers commented that for them the Tikal ceremony is not a show, not
tourism but something spiritual and personal. The secretary of the Great
Council of Ancestral Authorities commented that Mayan descendants felt
they were excluded from the activities in Tikal. This group held a
parallel ceremony, and complained that the date has been used for
commercial gain. In addition, before the main Tikal ceremony, about 200
Mayan descendants protested the celebration because they felt excluded.
Most descendants of the Maya were indifferent to the ceremonies, and the
small number of people still practising ancient rites held solemn, more
private ceremonies.
Osvaldo Gomez, a technical advisor to the Tikal site, complained that
many visitors during the celebration had illegally climbed the stairs
of the
Temple of the Masks, causing "irreparable" damage.
South America
In
Brazil, Décio Colla, the Mayor of the City of
São Francisco de Paula,
Rio Grande do Sul, mobilized the population to prepare for the end of the world by stocking up on food and
supplies. In the city of
Corguinho, in the
Mato Grosso do Sul, a colony was built for survivors of the expected tragedy.
In
Alto Paraíso de Goiás, the
hotels also made specific reservations for prophetic dates. On 11 October 2012, in the Brazilian city of
Teresina,
police interrupted what was believed to have been an attempted mass
suicide by up to one hundred members of a cult headed by self-proclaimed
prophet Luis Pereira dos Santos, who predicted the end of the world on
the feast day of
Our Lady of Aparecida. Santos was subsequently arrested.
In Bolivia, President
Evo Morales participated in the
quechuan and
aymaran rituals, this year organized with government support, to commemorate the
Southern solstice that took place in
Isla del Sol, in the southern part of
Lake Titicaca. During the event Morales proclaimed this day as the beginning of "
Pachakuti",
meaning the world's wake up to a culture of life and the beginning of
the end to wild capitalism, and he proposed to dismantle the
International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank.
Also in December 2012, the
Uritorco in
Córdoba,
Argentina was closed on 21 December, as a mass suicide had been proposed on Facebook to take place there.
Cultural influence
The 2012 phenomenon was discussed or referenced in several media.
Several TV documentaries, as well as some contemporary fictional
references to the year 2012, refer to 21 December as the day of a
cataclysmic event.
The
UFO conspiracy TV series
The X-Files
cites 22 December 2012 as the date for an alien colonization of the
Earth and mentions the Mayan calendar "stopping" on this date. The
History Channel aired a handful of special series on doomsday that include analysis of 2012 theories, such as
Decoding the Past (2005–2007),
2012, End of Days (2006),
Last Days on Earth (2006),
Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2007), and
Nostradamus 2012 (2008). The
Discovery Channel also aired
2012 Apocalypse in 2009, suggesting that massive
solar storms,
magnetic pole reversal, earthquakes,
supervolcanoes, and other drastic natural events may occur in 2012. In 2012, the
National Geographic Channel launched a show called
Doomsday Preppers, a documentary series about
survivalists preparing for various cataclysms, including the 2012 doomsday.
Hundreds of books were published on the topic. The bestselling book of 2009,
Dan Brown's
The Lost Symbol, featured a coded mock email number (2456282.5) that decodes to the
Julian date for "December 21, 2012".
In cinema the 2009 disaster film
2012 was inspired by the phenomenon, and advance promotion prior to its release included a
stealth marketing
campaign in which TV spots and websites from the fictional "Institute
for Human Continuity" called on people to prepare for the end of the
world. As these promotions did not mention the film itself, many viewers
believed them to be real and contacted astronomers in panic. Although the campaign was heavily criticized, the film became one of the most successful of its year, grossing nearly $770 million worldwide. An article in
The Daily Telegraph
attributed the widespread fear of the 2012 phenomenon in China to the
film, which was a smash hit in that country because it depicts the
Chinese building the "survival arks".
Lars von Trier's 2011 film
Melancholia features a plot in which a planet emerges from behind the Sun onto a collision course with Earth. Announcing his company's purchase of the film, the head of
Magnolia Pictures said in a press release, "As the 2012 apocalypse is upon us, it is time to prepare for a cinematic last supper".
The phenomenon also inspired several rock and pop music hits. As early as 1997, "
A Certain Shade of Green" by
Incubus
referred to the mystical belief that a shift in perception would arrive
in 2012 ("Are you gonna stand around till 2012 A.D.? / What are you
waiting for, a certain shade of green?"). More recent hits include "
2012 (It Ain't the End)" (2010) performed by
Jay Sean and "
Till the World Ends" (2011) performed by
Britney Spears. Towards mid-December 2012, an internet
hoax related to South Korean singer
PSY being one of the
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was widely circulated around social media platforms. The hoax text is as follows:
- From the calm morning,
- the end will come
- when of the dancing horse
- the number of circles will be nine
"Calm morning" is said to be in reference to PSY's birth country – the "land of morning calm", otherwise known as
South Korea. "Dancing horse" refers to PSY's "
Gangnam Style"
"dancing horse" routine, whereas the "nine circles" refer to the number
of zeroes in one billion (1,000,000,000), which is nine. It was
believed that once PSY's
Gangnam Style video on YouTube amassed a billion views, the world would end.
A number of brands ran commercials tied to the 2012 apocalypse in the
months and days leading to the date. In February 2012, American
automotive company
GM aired an advertisement during the annual
Super Bowl football game in which a group of friends drive
Chevrolet Silverados through the ruins of human civilization following the 2012 apocalypse, while on 17 December 2012,
Jell-O
ran an ad saying that offering Jell-O to the Mayan gods would appease
them into sparing the world. John Verret, Professor of Advertising at
Boston University, questioned the utility of tying large sums of money to such a unique and short-term event.
