A long time ago, I remember reading something about how either the Mayans or Aztecs (I know there is a big difference between them, but I still get them mixed up) predicted that the world would end in December 2007. Whoever wrote this or told me about it pointed out that the Mayan/Aztec calender was very exact, even compared to today’s standards. Has anybody else heard this? Do you remember the exact date and time? I am pretty sure that December 2007 is in fact the wrong date, but I can’t remember when it really is!
December 23, 2004
Using the Advanced Google search parameters:
Mayan calendar “end of the world”
yielded more than 800 hits, that agree the Mayan end-of-the-world date is December 22, 2012. I didn’t check all 800 sites, so I don’t know the consensus of exactly what is supposed to happen then.
The Mayan Calendar used three interconnected cycles of days (with different periods and manners of reckoning for each). Every few centuries, all those cycles come together to end/begin on the same day.
Coincidentally, the several different cycles of the Mayan Calendar that can be traced back to 3114 B.C.E. come to a close on December 21, 2012. This is not a prediction that the world will end. It is simply a turning point to begin the next series of cycles.
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s (when a lot of people had decided that Western Civilization had gone down the wrong path and that certainly some non-Western society had found the real Truth–only to be destroyed by white European society) several people decided that the Maya was the society that had gotten it “right”. One nice feature about the Maya is their spectacularly accurate calendar. If your typical technophilic American wanted to
dismiss the ancient wisdom of the peyote-chewing Indians, chanting Tibetan monks, incense-burning Indian gurus, or whoever, that modern American had to be impressed by the mathematical abilities of the Mayans and their calendar.
And if that calendar ended on December 21, 2012 (by Gregorian reckoning), then maybe there was some special knowledge to be had from the Mayans.
Of course, being crackpots, they couldn’t quite get it right. There is a big controversy between archaeologists and the true believers regarding the exact date. The more far out advocates of special Mayan wisdom hold that the cycle will roll on December 23, not December 21. They also decided that since the calendar “rolled” on that date, and since the Mayans had no astronomical predictions after that date, then that date must indicate the end of the world.
The Mayan predictions related to their calendar are in regards to planetary alignments. The Mayans did not predict the conquest of the Americas by Europeans, the two World Wars, or the atomic bomb.
The Mayan Calendar is fascinating. There is at least one fairly good web site devoted to it (there are probably many more):
The Goto.com search engine has this to say about it:
"The following links relate to the Mayan Calendar and/or Cosmology as interpreted by various non-Maya, mostly north-of-the-border, folks. Some of these interpretations are pretty out there but you might find them interesting nevertheless. "
http://www.netshaman.com/MayanCosmos.html
The late wild mind Terence McKenna devoted a lot of thought to this as well.
It’s pretty out there, but here ya go:
http://www.levity.com/eschaton/Why2012.html
http://www.levity.com/eschaton/finalillusion.html
http://www.levity.com/eschaton/twzdemo.html
And, OK, Tom, now I b’lieve you DO know just about everthin’! 
Wow! I’m surprised and impressed by how quickly you replied with so much information! I hope Cecil and the Straight Dope Advisory Board take notice!
elelle, I don’t know nearly everything, I just sock away the stuff I learn. This came up on the old AOL/SDMB and, after I looked it up, I stashed the info on a .txt file on the grounds that it seemed likely to come up, again. (This is at least its fourth appearance on one or another version of the Straight Dope.)
It was my understanding that the Mayas believed that the new cycle would repeat the events of the old cycle. So this means that we can all look forward to having Monicagate repeated in about 500 years or so. 