The 2012 phenomenon is a range of beliefs and proposals positing that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur in the year 2012. The forecast is based primarily on what is claimed to be the end-date of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, which is presented as lasting 5,125 years and as terminating on December 21 or 23, 2012. Arguments supporting this dating are drawn from a mixture of amateur archaeoastronomy, alternative interpretations of mythology, numerological constructions, and alleged prophecies from extraterrestrial beings.

A New Age interpretation of this transition posits that, during this time, the planet and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era. Conversely, some believe that the 2012 date marks the beginning of an apocalypse. Both ideas have been disseminated in numerous books and TV documentaries, and have spread around the world through websites and discussion groups. The idea of a global event occurring in 2012 based on any interpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is rejected as pseudoscience by the scientific community, and as misrepresentative of Maya history by Mayanist scholars.

Mesoamerican Long Count calendar

December 2012 marks the ending of the current baktun cycle of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, which was used in what is now Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Though the Long Count was most likely invented by the Olmec, it has become closely associated with the Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD. The classic Maya were literate and their writing system has been substantially deciphered, meaning that a corpus of written and inscribed material has survived from before the European conquest.

The Long Count set its “year zero” at a point in the past marking the end of the previous world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to either 11 or 13 August 3114 BC in the Proleptic Gregorian calendar, depending on the formula used. Unlike the 52-year calendar round still used today among the Maya, the Long Count was linear, rather than cyclical, and kept time roughly in units of 20, so 20 days made a uinal, 18 uinals, or 360 days, made a tun, 20 tuns made a katun, and 20 katuns, or 144,000 days, made up a baktun. So, for example, the Mayan date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 baktuns, 3 katuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days since creation. Many Mayan inscriptions have the count shifting to a higher order after 13 baktuns. Today, the most widely accepted correlations of the end of the thirteenth baktun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, with the Western calendar are either December 21 or December 23, 2012.

In 1957, the early Mayanist and astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson wrote that “[t]he completion of a Great Period of 13 baktuns would have been of the utmost significance to the Maya”. The anthropologist Munro S. Edmonson added that “there appears to be a strong likelihood that the eral calendar, like the year calendar, was motivated by a long-range astronomical prediction, one that made a correct solsticial forecast 2,367 years into the future in 355 B.C. [sic]“. In 1966, Michael D. Coe more ambitiously claimed in The Maya that “[t]here is a suggestion [...] that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the thirteenth [baktun]. Thus [...] our present universe [... would] be annihilated on December 24, AD 2011, [later revised to December 23, 2012]^[a] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion.”

Coe’s apocalyptic connotations were accepted by other scholars through the early 1990s. But more recent academic scholars have said that, while the end of the 13th baktun would perhaps be a cause for celebration, it did not mark the end of the calendar. In their seminal work of 1990, the Maya scholars Linda Schele and David Freidel, who reference Edmonson, argue that the Maya “did not conceive this to be the end of creation, as many have suggested,” citing Mayan predictions of events to occur after the end of the 13th baktun. Schele and Freidel note that creation date was inscribed at Coba 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, with twenty units above the katun. According to Schele and Friedel, these 13s should be treated as 0s, so the Coba number would be read as if it were 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0, with the units of each column beyond the second (counting from right to left) equal to 20 times those of the previous one (The Maya, due to their cyclical concept of time, also wrote the date of creation, their zero date, as 13.0.0.0.0). This number represented “the starting point of a huge odometer of time”. Schele and Freidel calculate that the date at which this odometer would run out lies some 4.134105 × 10²⁸ years in the future, or 3 quintillion times the scientifically accepted age of the universe. The issue is complicated further by the fact that many different Maya city-states employed the Long Count in different ways. At Palenque, evidence suggests that the priest timekeepers believed the cycle would end after 20 baktuns, rather than 13. A monument commemorating the ascension of the king Pakal the Great connects his coronation with events as much as 4000 years after, indicating that those scribes did not believe the world would end on 13.0.0.0.0.

Maya references to 2012

The present-day Maya, as a whole, do not attach much significance to 2012. Although the calendar round is still used by some Maya tribes in the Guatemalan highlands, the Long Count was strictly employed by the classic Maya, and was only recently rediscovered by archaeologists. Mayan elder Apolinario Chile Pixtun and Mexican archaeologist Guillermo Bernal both note that “apocalypse” is a Western concept that has little or nothing to do with Mayan beliefs. Bernal believes that such ideas have been foisted on the Maya by Westerners because their own myths are “exhausted”. Mayan archaeologist Jose Huchm complains that, “If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn’t have any idea. That the world is going to end? They wouldn’t believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain.”

What significance the classic Maya gave the 2012 date is uncertain. Most classic Maya inscriptions are strictly historical and do not make any prophetic declarations. Two items in the Maya classical corpus, however, mention the end of the 13th baktun: Tortuguero Monument 6 and, possibly, the Chilam Balam.

Tortuguero

The Tortuguero site, which lies in southernmost Tabasco, Mexico, dates from the 7th century AD and consists of a series of inscriptions in honor of the contemporary ruler. One inscription, known as Tortuguero Monument 6, is generally agreed among Mayanists to refer to the 2012 date. It has been partially defaced; Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone has given the most complete translation:

Tzuhtz-(a)j-oom u(y)-uxlajuun pik

The Thirteenth [b'ak'tun] will end

(ta) Chan Ajaw ux(-te’) Uniiw.

(on) 4 Ajaw, the 3rd of Uniiw [3 K'ank'in].

Uht-oom Ek’-…

Black … will occur.

Y-em(al) … Bolon Yookte’ K’uh ta-chak-ma…

(It will be) the descent(?) of Bolon Yookte’ K’uh to the great (or red?)…

Very little is known about the god (or gods) Bolon Yookte’ K’uh. Possible translations of his or their name include “nine support [gods]“, “Many‐Strides God”, “Nine‐Dog Tree”, or “Many‐Root Tree”. He appears in other inscriptions as a god of war, conflict, and the underworld, though Markus Eberl and Christian Prager believe that the Tortuguero inscription parallels the typical Maya ruler’s pronouncement of a future dedicatory celebration. No illustrations of Bolon Yookte’ exist, though dozens of other gods’ images are known. Also, the long count used at Tortuguero contains 20 b’ak’tuns in a cycle, so the end of the 13th b’ak’tun would not end the cycle according to Tortuguero astronomers.

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Reprinted from Wikipedia