No poll?
No absolutely not. But I think the options should be more involved:
A) The Mesoamericans predicted the world will end, in 2012, and it will! Forever!
B) The Mesoamericans predicted the world will end, in 2012, and it will! But a new world will be born in it’s ashes.
C)The Mesoamericans predicted the world will end, and it will! But a new world will be born in it’s ashes. And it doesn’t have to be 2012.
D) I don’t know what they actually said, but whatever it was, it ain’t gonna happen (or maybe I do know, but it still ain’t gonna happen).
E) There will be some new agey significant event in 2012 instead of actual world splosion.
F) The calendar ends in 2012 but this is no more significant than the odometer going back to zero.
G) The calendar doesn’t even end in 2012.
H) Oh hell, there’s lots more options but I’m getting bored of listing them.
I’m working from memory, so excuse any gross errors.
My understanding is, they did believe that the world was destroyed four times before and we are in the “fifth sun”. Presumably the mythology holds that our world might also be destroyed by some new cataclysm, but be likewise reborn again. But, I don’t think this had any relationship to 2012. In fact, some “future date” references are past the 2012 date.
2012 is just the end of the calendar in the same way that a car odometer goes back to zero. But it depends. The calendar is weird, with cycles of 20 and 18, for the most part, and the largest 20 cycle is in question. They weren’t consistent. Some sources imply that after we hit 20 on the biggest place holder, then we roll over to 1 on the next place, which would make all the other places go to zero. Other sources imply that then it goes to 21, which would be kind of weird considering the rest only go to 20 or 18, but whatever, they didn’t have national standards bureaus.
Either way, it’s just like Y2K - they didn’t usually bother listing the part of the date that would stay at zero for thousands of years, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. We may not have bothered writing dates out as 9/9/1990 but that doesn’t mean we thought that writing the date as 9/9/90 meant we thought the world would end at the year 2000.
As far as I recall, there’s only one actual direct reference to the 2012 date, and it’s somewhat vague, and some of the symbols are worn away.
I think the calendar is just a way to measure astronomical data, particularly the transit of Venus.
To recap:
- They probably do believe the world will end, but then it will be reborn.
- The world ending has nothing to do with 2012.
- 2012 is one possible odometer reset, but not the only one.
- 2012 might be referenced in one vague statement, but it’s not an ongoing theme.
- Regardless of mythology, it’s a religious belief. It has no bearing on real world events (other than astronomical transits).
- Best (worst?) case scenario, there’s some kind of alignment of memes that entrains our brains to placebo something neato. But, a longshot.