Much to the disappointment of Roland Emmerich, it appears that the ancient Mayans may not have predicted that a cataclysmic apocalypse would extinguish all life on earth at the end of 2012.
Lucky us.
The best way to think of the Mayan calendar is a car odometer, says Geoffrey Braswell, an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego. "My first car (odemeter) only had six wheels so it went up to 99,999.9 miles. That didn't mean the car would explode after reaching 100,000 miles," he says.
So, where did claims of towering tsunamis, asteroids, city-destroying earthquakes come from? Western culture, scientists say.
"This is thinking that, in truth, has nothing to do with Mayan culture," claims University of Quinatana Roo anthropologist Alexander Voss. "This thing about looking for end-times is not something that comes from Mayan culture."
Mayan prophecies were conceived based on recurring patterns rather than far-off, disasters, says Alfredo Barrera, a representative of the National Institute of Anthropology and History. "The Mayas did make prophecies, but not in a fatalistic sense, but rather about events that, in their cyclical conception of history, could be repeated in the future."
Further breaking superstitions that the Mayas were the harbingers of humanity's destruction, Braswell insists that "there are many ancient Maya monuments that discuss events far into the future from now."
He adds, "The ancient Maya clearly believed things would happen far into the future from now."
Specifically, "the king of Palenque, K'inich Hanaab Pakal, believed he would return to the Earth a couple of thousand years from now in the future. Moreover, other monuments discuss events even before the creation in 3114 B.C," writes Braswell.