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A professor of Latin American History with the University of West Georgia said on Wednesday’s WLBB Community Voice program: there is in fact a 12/21/12 end of the world prediction… but, it was probably not made by the Mayans.
“It was made by modern-western people like us—I think in the 1970’s, coming out of these sort of new-age communities that are always looking for some major event,” Gary VanValen said. “As far as we know, the Mayans would have considered this a significant date, but they would not have considered it to be the end of the world. They would have considered it to be a new cycle of time.”
Professor VanValens says the Mayans actually used three separate calendars. The Mayan long-count-calendar featuring what is called Baktun, seems to be the inspiration behind the western-culture’s interpretation of doomsday.
“The reason people say the world is going to end Friday is because… from the date (the Mayans) consider the beginning of time—August 11th, 3114 BC, 13 Baktuns would have completed,” he says. “So, cycles of almost 400 years… 13 of them will be done. The only real significance of that is that they are going to run out of names for these cycles and repeating them. So, it’s like the odometer on your car reaching zero and going back to 000001 again.
Our very informative discussion on Mayan history and the story behind the alleged prophecy is available on our website.