Doomsday forecasters are having a bad time

By David Young

With the sun shining, in Panama, an extension of the rainy season seemingly avoided and the economy trundling along the fast track, the local doomsday fraternity is not having a good year.

As some readers have been quick to point out, the Mayans did not predict the end of the world in 2012, although some groups will probably be girding their loins in preparation for the climb to the  top of the nearest mountain on December 12 2012.

That’s when  the Mayan long count calendar will finish, and the doomsday theorists get ready for the end of it all.

The prognosticators and rumor mongers are having a great time, matched only by those who became talking head pundits on TV at the beginning of the millennium, predicting planes following out of the sky and other technical disasters as computer systems failed.

The Week has produced a summary of what  the Mayan imbroglio is all about so most of us can all sleep easier as long as we don’t watch the news from Wall Street.

With global warming, climate change and the economic crisis, we already have enough to worry about, although in Panama, it seems that for now the weather pundits were wrong and instead of excessive rain we are actually enjoying “summer”. Keep your fingers crossed.

WHAT IS THE MAYAN LONG COUNT CALENDAR? The Mesoamerican long count calendar was used by a number of New World civilisations before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. The Mayan version is based on the belief that the gods had created four worlds – with humans living on the most recent of these, following the destruction of a third world that lasted 5,125.37 years.

The current world was created in August 3114 BC, which means, according to the long count calendar, it will end 5,125.37 years later, on 21 December 2012.

WHAT DID THE MAYANS PREDICT FOR 2012? The Mayans did not predict the end of the world – only the beginning of a new calendar. In any case, Mayan civilisation all but ended about 500 years before the arrival of the Spaniards, which suggests that 2012 would have been for them a wildly optimistic date for the end of the world.

SO WHY ARE PEOPLE PREDICTING DOOMSDAY? Although the Mayans did not predict the end of the world for December 2012, they did describe an undated Doomsday scenario involving catastrophic floods in a text known as the Dresden Codex. It is possible that the internet crackpots have mixed together the Dresden Codex and long count calendar to create a neat Doomsday prediction. Cynics would say '12.21.12' is simply the latest in a tradition of Doomsaying that goes back to the dawn of time. A celebrated Assyrian clay tablet from around 2,800BC reads: "Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common."

HOW ARE OTHERS PREDICTING THE WORLD WILL END IN 2012? The erroneous belief that the Mayans predicted the end of the world has led to a number of predictions of how the world will end – presumably by internet whackos who aren't aware of the Dresden Codex:

·         Nibiru, a planet allegedly discovered by the Sumerian civilisation – they're from the Middle East, by the way, and flourished around 2,500 years before the Mayans enjoyed their golden age – will supposedly crash into earth. The collision was actually first predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened, the idea was recycled to beef up the 2012 myth. Variations of this prediction involve meteors or the dwarf planet Eris, which is in the outer solar system, 4 billion miles from earth.

·         A geological catastrophe,such as an earthquake, super-volcano or polar shift – in which the earth's magnetic poles switch – will, we are told, wipe out humanity. The latter has been confusingly combined with the rather unlikely possibility that the earth's crust will shift over the course of a few hours, causing an Armageddon-grade mega-tsunami.

·         Three alien spaceshipshave been discovered by Seti, the privately-funded scientific body which aims to find extraterrestrial life, and they will apparently arrive on earth in December 2012. This report first appeared in 2010 and was debunked by a Seti spokesman in January 2011.

WHAT DO THE EXPERTS SAY?
Nasa has gone to some lengths to debunk the idea that the world will end in 2012, dignifying it with a lengthy rebuttal first published in 2009.

"For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science?" writes the rather testy-sounding Nasa scribe in a press release. "Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the internet, we cannot change that simple fact."There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012."

Meanwhile, even a man trained by Mayan elders to read their ancient calendars says the end of 2012 is something to celebrate – not to fear. "This has happened before, and according to the elders this is the fifth time it's happened," Leonzo Barreno, Global Chair of Journalism at the University of Regina, told Canada’s CBC … so sleep well