A bunch of techies... day after day spent in meetings reviewing pages and pages of documentation... finally, a break... and bottomless glasses of wine! Awesome combo. Conversations start with project work and then slowly move to holiday plans, families, dream vacations... glasses are getting refilled without us noticing it... and then we hit THE topic... Dec 21, 2012: The new D-Day.
Alcohol makes every idea and concept sound so brilliant!! So after the get together, I got home and actually googled 2012. I was amazed at the number of sites dedicated to this idea. Since I have stumbled upon this wealth of knowledge, I thought I should share it :)
The Maya civilization is a Mesoamerican civilization that was culturally very dynamic. They had a system of distinct calendars and almanacs. The Tzolk'in calendar combines twenty day names with the thirteen numbers of the trecena cycle to produce 260 unique days. The Haab' was the Maya solar calendar made up of eighteen months of twenty days each plus a period of five days ("nameless days") at the end of the year making it 365 days. Neither the Tzolk'in nor the Haab' system numbered the years. The combination of a Tzolk'in date and a Haab' date was enough to identify a date to most people's satisfaction, as such a combination did not occur again for another 52 years, above general life expectancy. Because the two calendars were based on 260 days and 365 days respectively, the whole cycle would repeat itself every 52 Haab' years exactly. This period was known as a Calendar Round. The end of the Calendar Round was a period of unrest and bad luck among the Maya, as they waited in expectation to see if the gods would grant them another cycle of 52 years. Since Calendar Round dates can only distinguish within 18,980 days, equivalent to around 52 solar years, the cycle repeats roughly once each lifetime, and thus, a more refined method of dating was needed if history was to be recorded accurately. To measure dates, therefore, over periods longer than 52 years, Mesoamericans devised the Long Count calendar.
The Mayan name for a day was k'in. Twenty of these k'ins are known as a winal or uinal. Eighteen winals make one tun. Twenty tuns are known as a k'atun. Twenty k'atuns make a b'ak'tun. The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from August 11, 3114 BCE (0.0.0.0.0). The Long Count days were tallied in a modified base-20 scheme. The last digit goes from 0 - 19 (i.e., 20 k'ins). The second last digit goes from 0 - 17 (i.e., 18 winals). The third & fourth digits from last goes again from 0 - 19 (i.e., 20 tuns and 20 k'atuns). The fifth digit from last depicts the b'ak'tun. December 21, 2012 is 13.0.0.0.0, the first day of thirteenth b'ak'tun.
The Popol Vuh is a book written in the Classical Quiché language containing mythological narratives and a genealogy of the rulers of the post classic Quiché Maya kingdom of highland Guatemala. It also contains some stories about the creation of humanity. According to Popol Vuh, we are living in the fourth world. Gods failed in the making of the first three creations and then in the successful fourth world creation, humans were placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous creation ended at the start of a 13th b'ak'tun. The previous creation ended on a long count of 12.19.19.17.19. Another 12.19.19.17.19 will occur on December 20, 2012, followed by the start of the thirteenth b'ak'tun, 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21, 2012.
Call it religious conditioning or whatever else; we have always been fixated on a doomsday prophecy. The date keeps changing, the explanations vary, but there is always a doomsday. And right now, it is Dec 21, 2012. But the interesting fact is the most websites call it, "It’s the end of the world as we know it". Isn't it an REM song? If I remember right, the song goes on to say that "I feel fine".
Some even say that 2012 is when the human race will be enlightened! Yeah, right!! There are people getting enlightened everyday... its the big and small things that happen in your day to day life that gets you there. And it is a life long process. The world is not going to change. The people are not going to change. Both the world and the people just evolve.
The only scientific significance I could find for the D-Day is this: The date December 21st, 2012 A.D. (13.0.0.0.0 in the Long Count), represents an extremely close conjunction of the Winter Solstice Sun with the crossing point of the Galactic Equator (Equator of the Milky Way) and the Ecliptic (path of the Sun).
The day also has some astronomical significance. The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle. The depiction of the serpent is believed to have been inspired by the Milky Way, as some ancient texts refer to a serpent of light residing in the heavens. The Milky Way is this serpent, and viewed at galactic central point near Sagittarius, this serpent eats its own tail. During the solstice on Dec 21, 2012 the sun will appear to rising out of the mouth of the ouroboros. Greeks call this phenomenon Suntelia Aion (means 'End of Age'). Coincidence?
