WAPO Editorial 01-01-12: Is 2012 the end of the world as we know it?

By Matthew Restall and Amara Solari, Published: December 30 The last New Year’s Day in human history is here. You may not believe so, but millions do. They’re convinced that ancient Maya priests calculated Dec. 21, 2012, as the end of the world as we know it. These claims and warnings, prognostications and reassurances are on bookstore shelves, on Web sites, in museum exhibits and in tourist promotions. The global doomsday industry even has a name — 2012ology.

This is an interesting opinion piece, and it raises at least one question: Just WHY do people WANT to believe that the ancient Maya priests got this right? Clearly they DO want to believe it, because they CHOOSE to believe it. Just how much other stuff did the Maya priests get correct? How good has their track record been? How successful were they are preserving (conserving) mayan culture, saving it from the depardations of the Spainiards?

Apocalyptic anxiety is, if anything, reassuringly familiar. This most recent phenomenon taps into a well-established tradition in our society. Just this past year, religious broadcaster Harold Camping took two swings at predicting doomsday, pinpointing one date in May and, when the world emerged unscathed, one in October.

Perhaps the idea of the world coming to an end appeals because then, the question, "what can we do to prevent the world from coming to an and?" need not be asked. If the fate is sealed, we merely need to sit back and await the inevitable. This is an incredibly weak point of view as to either the power of human kind to shape events, or even of the God of Human Kind to answer prayers from His faithful. This is, to my mind, the lazy person's way out. Chicken little: "The sky is falling; the sky is falling!"

What makes 2012ology different is the starring role it gives to the ancient Maya. Among numerous native cultures in the Americas, the Maya seem to have captured the popular imagination. They are cast as a mysteriously wise civilization, one that disappeared into the tropical forests of Central America, taking with it a sacred knowledge that has only recently started coming to light.

Just WHO casts them as such? The Mayans were a popular group of people amongst some of the cartoon shows my son used to watch back in the late 80's and early 90's. And if the sacred knowledge disappeared into the tropical forests of Central America, why in the world do we permit all the deforestration of the tropical forests of Central America to continue unabated? Again, this has a ceretain fatalist, doomsday, over tone that is quite disturbing -- EXCEPT, perhaps to the extent, that this crappolla has been going on for a lo9ng enough time, the rape, pillage and plunder of the earth, and the economy sucks so badly - all the world over - that perhaps entirely expectedly and naturally, people's attitudes are colored darkly by current events.

Although the disaster flick “2012” — early to the game in 2009 — featured no Maya priests and portrayed largely tongue-in-cheek science, its promotional tag­line succinctly captured the assumptions underlying 2012ology: “First, the Mayan calendar predicted it. . . . Now, science has confirmed it.”

But that was an advertisement for a fake movie, about a lot of fake stuff - we ought not give or put credibility to the part about "science has confirmed it." That is just some ad writers propaganda, written to induce you to WANT to see the movie, and get you to promote it amongst your friends.

The only problem is, the ancient Maya predicted no such thing. Nor has anything been confirmed by science.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPsss!!! Now, THIS presents a problem; or not. People are willing to believe whatever they are willing to believe, and need no facts, and no science to back up and support and confirm their beliefs. Educational systems failing, left and right!

During the heyday of their civilization, circa A.D. 250 to 900, the Maya produced thousands of artworks and hieroglyphic texts, a dazzling legacy of literature and learning, art and architecture. But they weren’t preoccupied with apocalypse. Maya creation mythology recorded tales of a past world, but it did not detail how and when the current world would end — or even if it would. Instead, the Maya appear to have been particularly fascinated with re- creation, as it figured prominently in myth and in ritual performance. The Maya perceived time as a complex set of infinite cycles, not a clock ticking toward doomsday. One of these cycles, known by scholars as the Maya Long Count, consisted of more than 5,000years. In our calendrical system it began in August 3114 B.C. and is due to end on Dec. 21, 2012 — or, in Maya numerology, 13.0.0.0.0.

This becomes much more interesting, to me. A complex set of infinite cycles - this seems utterly consistent with my understanding of and beliefs about the Creator of all the worldss, and seems pretty consistent with re-incarnation theories.

But there is nothing to suggest that the Maya thought this date would be the world’s last. If anything, they might have worried a bit about the roundness of the number, like we did about Y2K. But 13.0.0.0.0 was not the end. One glyphic text that records the date 13.0.0.0.0, a carved stone plaque from the Mexican site of Tortuguero, was ambiguously read by Maya scholars in 1996 as possibly predicting an ominous event — the “descent” of a deity associated with the underworld.

You mean, worse than George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton?

The scholars posted their interpretation online, and that reading spread rapidly across the Internet in the following years, promoted by 2012ologists as evidence of a specific Maya prophecy. Meanwhile, epigraphers — those who study the glyphs — gave the Tortuguero plaque a closer look. The consensus today is that the text refers to a future commemoration of that date, when the local ruler will impersonate or represent that deity. It is not a doomsday prophecy but a bold assertion that the seventh-century building once marked by the plaque would still stand in 2012. For 2012ologists, however, the original interpretation is the true one. End-times believers are also convinced that a carving made 2,300 years ago in Izapa, Mexico, depicting a caiman, a macaw and an elaborately dressed man is a cosmic map. While scholars of ancient Mexico debate the meanings of this image, 2012ologists have gone several steps further, insisting that it is a chart of the galaxy’s future — one that predicts a world-changing galactic alignment in the 2012 sky. This despite the fact that Izapa was a pre-Maya city whose people neither wrote nor recorded any dates. And despite the fact that most astronomers dispute the claim that galactic alignment is rare or ominous.

Quite interesting. Arguing with assuredness about a thing which is pure speculation. How very human; how very dangerous!

If the evidence for Maya doomsday predictions is so flimsy — if the impending Maya apocalypse is a mere myth — then why are so many people so willing to believe it is true? Why do some seem to want Dec. 21 to be the long-awaited end of the world? One explanation is the persistent power of ancient wisdom. All societies are drawn to knowledge that seems time-worn, mysterious, coded — and to the magic of its decoding. That is partly why “The Da Vinci Code” has sold 100 million copies, why people listened to Camping’s predictions about Judgment Day and even, in a sense, why billions are attracted to religion.

Perhaps we just want an easy way out, where we have no agency in our own salvation of the world for future generations?

That is also why we are drawn to ancient civilizations whose knowledge has been buried — literally — for hundreds or thousands of years. A century ago, ancient Egypt was in the limelight, as archaeologists excavated the tombs of pharaohs. In recent decades, the Maya have taken a star turn, as more of their ancient cities in Mexico and Central America have been unearthed and their hieroglyphic texts deciphered. Another explanation lies deep within our own Western civilization and religious traditions, which include teachings about the end of the world. In stark contrast to the Maya, medieval Europeans generated a vast body of literature and artwork predicting and describing the world’s end. Nobody questioned that it would come; the issue was how and when. Some were willing — then, as now — to stick their necks out and predict a specific day. When Joachim of Fiore insisted that 1260 would be the end, many thousands in Europe listened. They listened, too, across the English-speaking world when William Miller in Vermont picked 1843(and then 1844) as our final year. Likewise, Camping generated huge publicity for his 2011 predictions. Apocalyptic imaginings and doomsday gullibility are woven into the very fabric of Western society. A final explanation lies in the comfort of belief, in the security of taking a leap of faith. The great revolutions in science, industry and technology have profoundly transformed life on Earth. But science has not replaced religion. Instead, the two have developed a complicated relationship. Science is a religion; religion has become a science. Anxiety and skepticism abound. The more answers science offers, the more questions we have. Overwhelmed by the evidence for a phenomenon such as global warming, some choose to believe in it or not. In a similar way, what evidence exists — or does not — for Maya predictions, biblical prophecies and astronomical prognostications is less important than what we simply choose to believe. In the end, for some, 2012 is a matter of faith. But this doesn’t need to be disquieting. You can choose to ignore the evidence that the Maya did not predict that the world would end this year, to dismiss the fact that science has not confirmed such an apocalypse, and still be optimistic about Dec. 21. There is an upbeat tendency emerging even among hard-core believers in 2012ology. They see the “end” as a wonderful new beginning — that this year will bring the dawn of a new and better world. Let’s hope that those optimistic 2012ologists are right and that the ancient Maya — who most likely saw Dec. 21, 2012, as little more than a massive new year’s celebration — were wrong.

outlook@washpost.com Matthew Restall and Amara Solariare the authors of “2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse.” They teach art history, history and anthropology at Pennsylvania State University.