2012 (Typed. Podcast later.)

Apparently, the world is going to end on December 21st, 2012. All of the students planning to go to college are just wasting their time, according to the Mayan calendar. In 250-900 AD, a civilization known as the Mayans created a calendar using 13 and 20 as base units, while the modern calendar uses base ten. The only similarity between the modern day calendar and the Mayans calendar is the solar year of 365 days. The calendar consists of five zeros, which can each individually reach up to 19. The system basically works as a tally system to count days. On the twentieth day, the second digit goes up to one. As the count goes on, 00100 is equal to about a year, 01000 is equal to about 20 years, and 10000 is about the same as 400 years. For example, the date 2.10.12.7.1, the Mayan date would be approximately 1012 years, 7 months, and 1 day. This is a complicated system in the 21st century, but what does it have to do with the end of the world? The Mayan Prophecy is based wholly on the idea that something bad is going to happen when the Long Count ends. According to the Long Count, the last day could occur on 13.0.0.0.0. This date represents 5126 years after the Long Count starts. Experts have worked out that since the beginning of the Mayan Long Count starts on August 11th, 3114 BC, the end of the long count lands on December 11th, 2012, predicting a doomsday.


When something bad is predicted to happen, people seem to come up with the most extreme possibilities. Many Archeologists and Mythologists do not believe that doomsday will happen at the end of the Long Count. Instead, they believe that and ‘age of enlightenment’ will happen.

The possibility of a doomsday happening on this date is unlikely, although this could be one myth with a positive outcome on humanity. Many people have started living their lives as they have wanted to, since there is only two years left to do so. One Fairgrounds Elementry student, Samanath Lowry, is trying to be all that she can before the possible end of the world. “If the world does end in 2012, I want to die after having a possitive impact on someone.”

More information on the Mayan calendar can be found at webexibits.org.