Mayan Calendar 2012 Hoax: Inscriptions Being Misinterpreted?
Internet chatter continues to heat up at a rapid pace concerning the Mayans prophecy on the end of the world on Dec. 21.
Planet Earth will cease to exist any further on Friday due to a black hole or some other type of unanticipated danger at the winter solstice, according to their calendar. However, many Mayan and planetary experts said there's no need to panic, as the apocalypse is nothing more than a bogus prediction made off an inaccurate calendar.
David Morrison, planetary astronomer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif, spoke to ABC Action News about the erroneous buzz being circulated on the web.
"It's clear to me that most of the messages are based on what people are seeing on the Internet and they're seeing hoaxes," he said.
Rosalind Joyce, who is a professor of anthropology at University of California, Berkeley, as well as a scholar in ancient culture of Central America, studied many different Mayan calendar texts including stone tablet carvings, pottery paintings and manuscripts. She elaborated on the misunderstanding over the world's supposed demise.
"The Maya never did predict the end of the world. The ancient Maya had a concept of long, continuous time on their calendar, but never an 'end time,' " she said. "In their calendar this is now the 13th baktun, and it does end on Dec. 21 as the calendar says. But the cycle will then begin again as the 14th baktun, and there will always be another baktun."
Joyce said that while many believe in the Earth's demise, it's really quite the opposite in nature.
"You can think of each cycle like a car's odometer. When it comes to an end, you just reset it," she added.
The etchings causing the worldwide pandemonium were part of a tomb or shrine tribute, which was inscribed around the 7th century A.D., according to Maya scholar David Stuart, author of "The Order of Days: The Maya World and the Truth About 2012."
