Mayans never predicted world to end in 2012 – experts

PALENQUE, Mexico, (Reuters) – If you are worried the  world will end next year based on the Mayan calendar, relax:  the end of time is still far off.

So say Mayan experts who want to dispel any belief that the  ancient Mayans predicted a world apocalypse next year.

The Mayan calendar marks the end of a 5,126 year old cycle  around Dec. 12, 2012 which should bring the return of Bolon  Yokte, a Mayan god associated with war and creation.

Author Jose Arguelles called the date “the ending of time  as we know it” in a 1987 book that spawned an army of Mayan  theorists, whose speculations on a cataclysmic end abound  online. But specialists meeting at this ancient Mayan city in  southern Mexico say it merely marks the termination of one  period of creation and the beginning of another.

“We have to be clear about this. There is no prophecy for  2012,” said Erik Velasquez, an etchings specialist at the the  National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “It’s a  marketing fallacy.”

The National Institute of Anthropological History in Mexico  has been trying to quell the barrage of forecasters predicting  the apocalypse. “The West’s messianic thinking has distorted  the world view of ancient civilizations like the Mayans,” the  institute said in a statement.

In the Mayan calendar, the long calendar count begins in  3,114 BC and is divided into roughly 394-year periods called  Baktuns. Mayans held the number 13 sacred and the 13th Baktun  ends next year.

Sven Gronemeyer, a researcher of Mayan codes from La Trobe  University in Australia, who has been trying to decode the  calendar, said the so-called end day reflects a transition from  one era to the next in which Bolon Yokte returns.

“Because Bolon Yokte was already present at the day of  creation … it just seemed natural for the Mayan that Bolon  Yokte will again be present,” he said.

Of the the approximately 15,000 registered glyphic texts  found in different parts of what was then the Mayan empire,  only two mention 2012, the Institute said.

“The Maya did not think about humanity, global warming or  predict the poles would fuse together,” said Alfonso Ladena, a  professor from the Complutense University of Madrid. “We  project our worries on them.”