NPR
“The Maya never, ever, said anything about the world ending at any time”
Each baktun represents 144,000 days — or nearly 400 years. The 13th (and, some say, final) baktun of the Mayan calendar is slated to come to an end on the solstice marked on Dec. 21, 2012.
“It’s a big deal — if you’re an ancient Maya astronomer priest,” Stuart says. “But apart from that, they didn’t say anything about … what will be happening.”
Stuart and other researchers have compared what’s about to happen to the Mayan calendar to an odometer on a well-driven car: The years will simply click over. If the car’s odometer runs past its complement of numbers, you can still drive it.
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Now they tell us.
Kenosha Kid on December 20, 2012 at 11:01 PM
It’s getting pretty windy tonight in Chicago… Oh. Nevermind.
Fallon on December 20, 2012 at 11:04 PM
Man. I paid $300 for these tickets =(
Ugly on December 20, 2012 at 11:12 PM
This is NOT something I want to hear.
How else are we supposed to avoid the fiscal cliff, or 4 more years of the Age of Obama?
malclave on December 20, 2012 at 11:12 PM
Dang. So now I do have to go out and buy Christmas presents.
rbj on December 20, 2012 at 11:15 PM
Or as my coworker put it “that’s just when their calendar runs out, not when the world runs out. If I stop counting at 1,000 watches, that doesn’t mean there won’t ever be any more.”
MelonCollie on December 20, 2012 at 11:16 PM
But-but what about that Dutch guy? The one who built that ark and endured all the mocking??
Ladysmith CulchaVulcha on December 20, 2012 at 11:23 PM
What does it even matter? Even if the Mayans did predict that the world would end tomorrow you’d have to be an idiot to believe it.
HidetheDecline on December 20, 2012 at 11:25 PM
Yeah, I’m really going to take advice from a culture who slaughtered their own in human sacrifice and still collapsed from within.
John the Libertarian on December 20, 2012 at 11:34 PM
Their calendar extended more than a thousand years into the future. How far out do the nitwits pushing this garbage think an ancient civilization lacking any computers should have calculated, a million years? I’m sure at some point someone told the guy making the calendar “Dude, that’s enough”.
HidetheDecline on December 20, 2012 at 11:37 PM
So what happened at end of the previous 13 baktun cycle (ca. 5100 years ago or 3100 BC)?
In any event, we’ll find out what happens this time in about 6 hours (winter solstice)…
Norwegian on December 20, 2012 at 11:41 PM
That’s precisely what I replied to my coworker.
Back then most people couldn’t even count to a hundred, if that far! And we’re all freaked out that a long-dead culture didn’t have calendars that went past 2012?!
Sheesh!
MelonCollie on December 20, 2012 at 11:43 PM
What people don’t seem to realize is that we’re all just inhabitants of a computer simulation. And the server we’re on didn’t get the Y2K bug fixed, which is due to hit in a bit over 6 hours.
malclave on December 20, 2012 at 11:59 PM
My calendar ends on January 31, so that’s the end of the world.
The Rogue Tomato on December 20, 2012 at 11:59 PM
The calendar in Windows only goes up to 2099, yet people who didn’t even have paper and pencils apparently should have mapped out the entire life cycle of the Earth.
HidetheDecline on December 21, 2012 at 12:00 AM
Thanks for nothing. I was hoping the stupidity was true and I could have owned the entire world.
J/K
F15Mech on December 21, 2012 at 12:06 AM
Harold Camping was not available for comment.
The Rogue Tomato on December 21, 2012 at 12:09 AM
Whatever. Like some “civilization” that still wiped there azzes with their hands were going to predict the end of the world.
Dack Thrombosis on December 21, 2012 at 12:29 AM
They also never predicted that Tang would be the official drink of the American Space Program either, but.
Aha!
hawkdriver on December 21, 2012 at 12:44 AM
I’m sure it calls for lots of human sacrifices, at least. The Mayans were pretty hot about that sort of stuff – usually animals (blood is blood, of course) special occasions called for rivers of human blood. That was the peaceful land that the nasty Europeans came to …
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on December 21, 2012 at 1:26 AM
They didn’t have the wheel, either. Well … they had the wheel, but they only used it in their calendar … and some toys. Geniuses, they were!
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on December 21, 2012 at 1:32 AM
So, I’ve still got to pay this damn $1300 electricity bill!?
OldEnglish on December 21, 2012 at 2:29 AM
“Oh no, we never said the world would come to an end, no, no, no, you got us all wrong…..”
haha
Dollayo on December 21, 2012 at 2:50 AM
Well, Gangnam Style is on pace to roll over to 1,000,000,000 views around then, does that count for anything?
Nah, didn’t think so…
Gingotts on December 21, 2012 at 2:56 AM
Well, crap, I’m still here. Gotta go to work.
davidk on December 21, 2012 at 6:28 AM
And the founding fathers never said anything about hunting rifles. Stop taking money from the people against their will, NPR.
WeekendAtBernankes on December 21, 2012 at 7:09 AM
At a friend’s home last night over Christmas cocktails, I heard someone toast to the end of the world. I asked him why he thought so and a discussion of the Mayan Calender began.
I ended all doubt about the reasons for the predicted end by telling all assembled that “The reason the calendar ends is because the union stonecutters went on strike!”.
We resumed our drinking and celebrating.
Merry Christmas to all!
ChicagoBlues on December 21, 2012 at 8:28 AM
They couldn’t predict their demise via the Spaniards but they could predict the end of the world?
That’s like all the tv psychics in the ’90s that said they could tell you your future but could never predict their own impending bankruptcy.
2lbsTest on December 21, 2012 at 8:36 AM
Sounds almost like our culture.
Nick_Angel on December 21, 2012 at 8:42 AM
Oh, well, sure, they say that now….
princetrumpet on December 21, 2012 at 8:44 AM
Hello??? Anybody still here or am I the last man left on Earth?
moo on December 21, 2012 at 8:59 AM
Bummer. I thought we were all batteries given the will to live via comatose existences (rich man, homeless bum, waitress, office drone, etc.) fed to us in dreams via our computer overlords that thrive thanks to our energy–some sort of matrix code.
Wait! That could make a kick-azz movie!
Ladysmith CulchaVulcha on December 21, 2012 at 10:14 AM