2012 phenomenon

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Eschatology

The 2012 phenomenon is a present-day cultural meme proposing 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 memes 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. The Long Count set its "time 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 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. Even before the dating issue was settled, the early Mayanist and astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson had written in 1957 that "[t]he completion of a Great Period of 13 baktuns would have been of the utmost significance to the Maya". After the correct date was determined, 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 23, 2012, when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion." These apocalyptic connotations were accepted by other scholars through the early 1990s. But more recent academic scholars have specifically disputed the apocalyptic interpretation of the Long Count calendar end-date, saying instead that it would be a cause for celebration but that the cycle would continue uninterrupted by any cataclysmic event.

These scholars argue that the Long Count does not end on 13.0.0.0.0. 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. The Maya, due to the cyclical nature of their calendar, also wrote the date of creation, their zero date, as 13.0.0.0.0. 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. 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 far as 4000 years in the future, 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."

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 the Chilam Balam.

Tortuguero

The Tortuguero site 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. 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.No illustrations of Bolon Yookte' exist, though dozens of other gods' images are known.

Chilam Balam

The Chilam Balam of Tizimin has been translated twice: once by the archaeoastronomer Maud Worcester Makemson and once by the anthropologist Munro S. Edmonson. Makemson believed that one of the lines in the book (licutal oxlahun bak chem, ti u cenic u tzan a ceni ciac aba yum texe) refered to the "tremendously important event of the arrival of 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 Kankin in the not too distant future", translating it as "Presently Baktun 13 shall come sailing, figuratively speaking, bringing the ornaments of which I have spoken from your ancestors." (Her version of the text continues, "Then the god will come to visit his little ones. Perhaps 'After Death' will be the subject of his discourse.") Makemson was still relying on her own dating of 13.0.0.0.0 to 1752 and therefore the "not too distant future" in her annotations meant a few years after the scribe in Tizimin recorded his Chilam Balam. Edmonson's translation does not support this reading; he considers the Long Count entirely absent from the book, with a 24-round may system used instead.

Other Chilam Balam books contain references to the 13th baktun, but it is unclear if these are in the past or future; for example, oxhun bakam u katunil (thirteen bakam of katuns) in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel.