2012 phenomenon
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A New Age interpretation of this transition is that the date marks the start of time in which Earth and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 21 December 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era.[8] Others suggest that the date marks the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world include the arrival of the next solar maximum, an interaction between Earth and the black hole at the center of the galaxy,[9] or Earth's collision with a planet called "Nibiru".
Scholars from various disciplines have dismissed the idea of such cataclysmic events occurring in 2012. Professional Mayanist scholars state that predictions of impending doom are not found in any of the extant classic Maya accounts, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar "ends" in 2012 misrepresents Maya history and culture,[3][10][11] while astronomers have rejected the various proposed doomsday scenarios as pseudoscience,[12][13] stating that they conflict with simple astronomical observations.[14]
Objections
Coe's interpretation was repeated by other scholars through the early 1990s.[26] In contrast, later researchers said that, while the end of the 13th b'ak'tun would perhaps be a cause for celebration,[3] it did not mark the end of the calendar.[27] "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."[28] 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".[29] 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.[3] 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".[3] "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."[30] 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."[31]Several prominent individuals representing Maya of Guatemala decried the suggestion that the world ends 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.[32]
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.[33] 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.[33]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.[34] His ideas were repeated by archaeologist Sylvanus Morley,[35] 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.[33]
Mayan references to b'ak'tun 13
It is not certain what significance the classic Maya gave to the 13th b'ak'tun.[36] Most classic Maya inscriptions are strictly historical and do not make any prophetic declarations.[36] 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.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. However, it contains no speculation or prophecy as to what the scribes believed would happen at that time.[44]
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,[45] arriving at a date of 21 October 4772 AD, more than 4,000 years after Pakal's time.[28][45][46]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.[29][Note c] Thus this inscription anticipates the current universe lasting at least 2021×13×360 days,[47] or roughly 2.687×1028 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.[47][48]
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.[31][49][50]
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.[4][51][52][53][54][55] The term is distinct from "Mayanist", used to refer to an academic scholar of the Maya.[52][56] 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.[57] 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".[2] 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".[58]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[Note e] to astrology and the prophecies of the Hopi,[59] while both José Argüelles (in The Transformative Vision)[60] and Terence McKenna (in The Invisible Landscape)[61][62] 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,[Note e] 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.[63][64] 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 Dec 2012). He believed that the Maya aligned their calendar to correspond to this phenomenon.[65] Anthony Aveni has dismissed all of these ideas.[66]
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.[67][68] 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".[8]
Galactic alignment
There is no significant astronomical event tied to the Long Count's start date.[69] 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.[51][53] Chief among these ideas is the astrological concept of a "galactic alignment", which is distinct from but related to the astronomical concept of occultation.Timewave zero and the I Ching
McKenna expressed "novelty" in a computer program which purportedly 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,[61] the graph appears 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.[94] 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.[2]
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[Note e] of 21 December 2012 throughout.[2][93]
Doomsday theories
Other alignments
Some people have interpreted the galactic alignment apocalyptically, claiming that when it occurs, it will somehow create a combined gravitational effect between the Sun and the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy (known as Sagittarius A*), thus creating havoc on Earth.[96] Apart from the fact noted above that the "galactic alignment" already 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.[74] Even if this were not the case, Sagittarius A* is 30,000 light years from Earth and would have to be more than 6 million times closer to cause any gravitational disruption to Earth's Solar System.[97][98] This reading of the alignment was included on the History Channel documentary, Decoding the Past. However, John Major Jenkins has 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".[99]Some believers in a 2012 doomsday have used the term "galactic alignment" to describe a very different phenomenon proposed by some scientists to explain a pattern in mass extinctions supposedly observed in the fossil record.[100] 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.[101] However, this "alignment" takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date.[102] 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.[103]
A third suggested alignment is some sort of planetary conjunction occurring on 21 December 2012; however, there will be no conjunction on that date.[104] Multi-planet alignments did occur in both 2000 and 2010, each with no ill result for the Earth.[105] 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.[106]
Geomagnetic reversal
Another idea tied to 2012 involves 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.[107] This belief is supposedly supported by observations that the Earth's magnetic field is weakening,[108] which could precede a reversal of the north and south magnetic poles, and the arrival of the next solar maximum, which is expected sometime around 2012.Most scientific estimates, however, say that geomagnetic reversals take between 1,000 and 10,000 years to complete,[109] and do not start on any particular date.[110] 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.[111] 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.[112] Instead, a solar maximum would be mostly notable for its effects on satellite and cellular phone communications.[113] 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.[95]
Planet X/Nibiru
Main article: Nibiru cataclysm
Some believers in doomsday in 2012 claim that a planet called
Planet X, or Nibiru, will collide with or pass by Earth in that year.
This idea, which has appeared in various forms since 1995, initially
predicted Doomsday in May 2003, but proponents later abandoned that date
after it passed without incident.[114] The idea originated from claims of channeling of alien beings and has been widely ridiculed.[114][115] Astronomers have calculated that such an object so close to Earth would be visible to anyone looking up at the night sky.[114]Other catastrophes
Other speculations regarding doomsday in 2012 have 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.[119]
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.[120] 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.[121]
Some media outlets have tied the fact that the red supergiant star Betelgeuse will undergo a supernova at some point in the future to the 2012 phenomenon.[122] 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.[123] To be a threat to Earth, a supernova would need to be as close as 25 light years to the Solar System. Betelgeuse is roughly 600 light years away, and so its supernova will not affect Earth.[124] In December 2011, NASA's Francis Reddy issued a press release debunking the possibility of a supernova occurring in 2012.[125]
Another claim involves alien invasion. In December 2010, an article, first published in examiner.com and later referenced in the English-language edition of Pravda[126] claimed, citing a Second Digitized Sky Survey photograph as evidence, that SETI had detected three large spacecraft due to arrive at Earth in 2012.[127] 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.[127] In January 2011, Seth Shostak, chief astronomer of SETI, issued a press release debunking the claims.[126]
Public reaction
Beginning in 2000, the small French village of Bugarach, population 189, began receiving visits from "esoterics"—mystic believers who have concluded that the local mountain, Pic de Bugarach, is 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 may call in the army.[132][133] "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."[134] In December 2012, the French government placed 100 police and firefighters around both Bugarach and Pic de Bugarach, limiting access to potential visitors.[135]
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.[136]
The Turkish village of Sirince, near Ephesus, expects to receive over 60,000 visitors on 21 December 2012, as New Age mystics believe its "positive energy" will aid in weathering the catastrophe.[137]
In China, several doomsday cultists have been arrested, and shoppers have hoarded supplies of candles in anticipation of coming darkness. On 14 December 2012, a man in Henan province, whom authorities suspect of being "influenced" by the apocalypse prediction, attacked and wounded 23 children with a knife. Academics in China attribute the widespread belief in the 2012 doomsday in their country to a lack of scientific literacy and a mistrust of the government-controlled media.[138]
In Brazil, Décio Colla, the Mayor of the City of São Francisco de Paula, Rio Grande do Sul, has mobilized the population to prepare for the end of the world by stocking up on food and supplies.[139][140] In the city of Corguinho, in the Mato Grosso do Sul, a colony is being built for survivors of the tragedy.[141] In Alto Paraíso de Goiás, the hotels also make specific reservations for prophetic dates.[142] 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.[143]
In December 2012, Vatican astronomer Rev Jose Funes wrote in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that apocalyptic theories around 2012 were "not even worth discussing".[144]
Also in December 2012, the Uritorco in Córdoba, Argentina was decided to be closed on December 21, as a mass suicide had been proposed on Facebook to take place there.[145]
Cultural influence
See also: 2012 in fiction
The 2012 phenomenon has been discussed or referenced in several
media. Several TV documentaries, as well as many 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.[2]
The History Channel has 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).[146] 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.[147] 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.[148]
Hundreds of books have been published on the topic.[95] The bestselling book of 2009,[149] Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, featured a coded mock email number (2456282.5) that decodes to the Julian date for "December 21, 2012".[150]
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.[151][152] Although the campaign was heavily criticized,[95] the film became one of the most successful of its year, grossing nearly $770 million worldwide.[153] 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".[154]
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.[155] 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".[156]
The phenomenon has also inspired several 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.
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. (When the whereabouts of one of their friends is queried, it is revealed that he died because he drove a Ford.)[157]
In 2011, the Mexico tourism board stated its intentions to use the year 2012, without its apocalyptic connotations, as a means to revive Mexico's tourism industry, which had suffered as the country gained a reputation for drug wars and kidnapping. The initiative hopes to draw on the mystical appeal of the Maya ruins.[158] 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, while in Izapa, a nearby archaeological site, Maya priests burned incense and prayed.[159]
See also
Notes
- a The number 13 plays an important role in Mesoamerican calendrics; the tzolk'in, or sacred calendar, was divided into 13 months of 20 days each. The Mayan may cycle consisted of 13 k'atuns. The reason for the number's importance is uncertain, though correlations to the phases of the moon and to the human gestation period have been suggested.[160][161]
- b The Mayan calendar, unlike the Western calendar, used a zero.[17]
- c Rather than "0.0.0.0.0", the Mayan Long Count represented the date of creation as "13.0.0.0.0"[47]
- d Most Mayanist scholars, such as Mark Van Stone and Anthony Aveni, adhere to the "GMT (Goodman-Martinez-Thompson) correlation" with the Long Count, which places the start date at 11 August 3114 BC and the end date of b'ak'tun 13 at 21 December 2012.[162] This date is also the overwhelming preference of those who believe in 2012 eschatology, arguably, Van Stone suggests, because it falls on a solstice, and is thus astrologically significant. Some Mayanist scholars, such as Michael D. Coe, Linda Schele and Marc Zender, adhere to the "Lounsbury/GMT+2" correlation, which sets the start date at 13 August and the end date at 23 December. Which of these is the precise correlation has yet to be conclusively settled.[163]
- e Coe's initial date was "24 December 2011." He revised it to "11 January AD 2013" in the 1980 2nd edition of his book,[164] not settling on 23 December 2012 until the 1984 3rd edition.[165] The correlation of b'ak'tun 13 as 21 December 2012 first appeared in Table B.2 of Robert J. Sharer's 1983 revision of the 4th edition of Sylvanus Morley's book The Ancient Maya (Morley 1983, p. 603, Table B2).
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