Randi Rhodes Forums

for more on the find and the gallery:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/mayan-prophecy-the-world-wont-end-as-a-newfound-calendar-goes-on-and-on-and-on/2012/05/10/gIQA03s3FU_story.html?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost

And, I read somewhere that the other calender that did end, didn't take leap years into account. So if there was an ending, it would have already happened.

what in the hell am I gonna do with all this!





and

The Long Count is 13 baktuns.

http://www.calendarhome.com/converter/mayan.html

However, the Maya counted in higher units of time.

An alautun is 63 million years. This suggests they thought the world was going to be around for a very, very long time.

Cancun is doing some fun "End of the World" tourism to cash in on all this nonsense. And I guess some New Age fans of Jose Arguelles may be trying to resume the Harmonic Convergence later this year.

You know what's going to happen on December 21st, 2012?

Absolutely nothing. (Well, something might happen. Maybe Lindsay Lohan will get arrested again.)

"There's a little black spot on the sun today ... it's the same ol spot as yesterday."

do the same thing you did in 2000?

who me?

nah, i asked around once about what i could buy to get me through a week without power and i just gave up, nothing seemed reasonable other than water, etc.

That argument doesn't make sense, though. The calendar is astronomically based and would end up in the same place that leap days are used to account for.

Not saying the world is going to end, but that leap year argument is weak.

I'm just waiting to see if any of the more enterprising atheists are gonna find a way to milk Xtians and "true-believers" out of tons of cash like they did with the last doomsday prophecy in taking care of non-raptured pets....I haven't laughed so hard in years....12 to be exact. Oh yeah, in case you guys are curious - go find some Asatruar and Pagans to have an "End Days Party" with. We truly are a fun bunch....

Crickette

Thanks for pointing this out. All we can say is that the Mayan Long Count Calendar RESETS everything below Baktun at the end of 13 Baktuns-- that's all. It does not END (and the Sacred Calendar Round just keeps chugging along). The 13 is ONLY significant in that it corresponds with Mayan Cosmology of 13 levels of the heavens. Sheesh.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/azteccalendar/a/aa101700a.htm
http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa101800a.htm

The Mayan Calendar is a DAILY calendar that, um, automatically conforms to the slight variation in the Tropical Year, so it has accurately measured elapsed time since the arbitrary start date in 3114 BCE. The Long Count can be accurately correlated to the Christian Calendar.

http://www.ancient-world-mysteries.com/long-count.html

Today's Long Count is:
12 . 19 . 19 . 8 . 15

http://mayan-calendar.com/calc.html

That first photo looks like stuff awaiting a trip to the dump.

The second looks like a wrist watch. It says it's 10:20 on the dot.

Seeker gives me brain aches that I didn't ask for, nor did I anticipate!!!

blah blah blah

it is going to end, and I am selling room on my rocket ship

The point is, it's a cyclical calendar.

The Long Count is actually one cycle within a larger calendar cycle, a cycle of 13 baktuns, just as a month is a part of a year, or a year is part of a decade, or a decade is part of a century.

It's not the end of the world when one decade ends. When one decade ends, another decade begins. When one century ends, another century begins. The weird thing about the Mayan calendar is it's a bit diff from our decimal system because everything is in units of 13 or 20. Cycles end when they reach a count of either 13 or 20. The Long Count ends after 13 baktuns elapse.

One Long Count will end on December 21st, 2012. Another Long Count will begin on December 22nd, 2012. That's it, really.

You don't freak out when your car odometer rolls over from 9999 to 0001, do you? That's all that really happens, a count of days will end, then it will start over at 1.

BTW, the Maya used two annual calendars: a secular diurnal/sidereal calendar of 365 days (it was actually 18 months of 20 days plus 5) (the haab), and a sacred calendar of 260 days (13 x 20) ... the tzolkin. Those calendars came back into alignment every 52 years.

Yes, I do teach about Mayan calendrics, in fact, I'm getting to that subject shortly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, seats are goin fast professor, and I am raising rates soon!