Nope, Not Quite the End of the World

I hope you’re enjoying all the craziness about the upcoming end of the world on December 21, 2012—according to the (snicker) Mayan Calendar. On that day, Martine and I will be driving to Palm Springs, where we will stand in flowing white robes, holding hands, on top of Mount San Jacinto. No, wait, actually we’ll be spending time with my brother Dan and his family, who are renting a house in PS for the holidays.

After my extensive travels to the Mayan area between 1975 and 1992—about eight trips in all—I managed to learn something about the Mayans and their calendar. The most important thing to note is that it recycles at the end of every 5,125-year cycle. According to some interpretations, one of those periods ends on Friday, though there is widespread disagreement among archaeologists on correlating the date to our own calendar.

The Mayans have already gone through a good deal more than twelve of those cycles, which they call baktuns. There are even longer cycles, called piktuns. The next piktun ends around October 13, 4772. There are even larger cycles called kalabtuns, kinchiltuns, and alautuns, which stretch millions of years into the future.

It looks to me as if the Mayans were planning to be around for a long, long time. A good deal longer than the morons who think the whole shooting match is over.

So let me be the first to wish you a happy 13th baktun of the current piktun. I hope all of you have a great 13.0.0.0.0.

You can read more about the Mayan calendar at Wikipedia (here and here) and at Tikalpark.Com. Just remember that this is just another Moronic Divergence, or should I say Harmonic Convergence?