WHY WE'RE STILL ALIVE POST-2012
BY: ALIA HASSAN
Archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni suggests that the prophecy was a figurative one, like the “cycles to our own New Year period, when […] frenetic activities and stress, [are] followed by a rebirth period, when many people take stock and resolve to begin living better” (Handwerk). He says that the Mayan culture was much more focused on the past anyway, as they were trying to plant their roots deep in history. Ask any modern Mayan living in Mexico or Guatemala about the 2012 doomsday, and they will not know what you’re talking about – the concept of the doomsday was a western distortion of Mayan beliefs (Handwerk).
Even more fantastical, is that after the whole 2012 phenomenon gained momentum, people started referencing 16th century French ‘seer’ Nostradamus with reference to the global success of PSY and his single Gangnam Style. Nostradamus once claimed that “From the calm morning, the end will come, when of the dancing horse, the number of circles will be nine.” People interpreted the calm morning as a reference to the Orient, the nine zeros were those in the YouTube views as they approached 1 billion, and the dancing horse was the dance steps in the song (Rose). Nostradamus predicted several other events, including Princess Diana’s death, the Kennedy assassinations, and 911. But the point is that Nostradamus’ predictions were always vague enough to be applied to the situations, with flexible interpretations. His prediction of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki critics claim was “so vague that it could also be used to describe a whole host of wartime atrocities during any of many wars.” (“Strange science”).
The most common scenario of the world ending was one that coincides with the events in 2012 the film, and in truth was likely propagated by it. A pole shift, caused by an extreme gravitational pull on the earth due to a rare event of ‘galactic alignment’, would have destabilized the earth’s core and the mantle and crust would suddenly shift (Handwerk). Continents would break apart and seismic activity would cause mass tsunamis and earthquakes, the ground would split
The world was meant to end on the 21st of December 2012. Millions of people were convinced that some catastrophe or another would strike and all life would come to an end, except those who were prepared. The movie 2012 directed by Roland Emmerich, also fueled these beliefs and created a dramatized image of a collapsing world. Coincidentally, Emmerich also directed and produced the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow, which also addresses the end of the world, but through a new Ice Age. The world didn’t collapse though, and there are a few reasons why…
One of the original ideas came from incorrect interpretations of the Mayan colander. The Mayans were an ancient civilization that spanned from 2000 BC- 900AD. They were an intelligent people, and so they created calandos that ran thousands of years into the future. Their ‘Long Count’ began August 11 3114BC, and when converted to the Gregorian calendar, the last date on their calendar is 21st of December 2012, which to them signified the ‘turn of a century’ and the day after was labeled Day Zero (Handwerk). Somehow apocalypse fanatics understood this to mean that the world would end on that day, and the next day was the beginning of a post-apocalyptic era. There is no evidence in Mayan history that suggests they believed in this day as the last day of civilization. Even recently archeologists found Mayan calendars that go thousands of years past 2012, making doomsday predications moot.
The civilization did however have a separate prophecy, found in a text named the Dresden Codex depicting the end of the world by flood, but the prophecy was undated so people decided to link it to the end of the calendar (Handwerk).
"From the calm morning, the end will come, when of the dancing horse, the number of circles will be nine.”