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Comments: 600 +- Science: "2012" a Miscalculation; Actual Calendar Ends 2220 on Monday October 26, @01:57PM
Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday October 26, @01:57PM
from the lost-in-translation dept.
from the lost-in-translation dept.
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boombaard writes "News is spreading quickly here that scientists writing in a popular science periodical (Dutch) have debunked the 2012 date (google translation linked) featuring so prominently in doomsday predictions/speculation across the web.
On 2012-12-21, the sun will appear where you would normally be able to see the 'galactic equator' of the Milky Way; an occurrence deemed special because it happens 'only' once every 25.800 years, on the winter solstice. However, even if you ignore the fact that there is no actual galactic equator, just an observed one, and that the visual effect is pretty much the same for an entire decade surrounding that date, there are major problems with the way the Maya Calendar is being read by doomsday prophets." I wonder what Amazon's return policy on a box full of 3 doomsday wolves shirts is?
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Assuming... (Score:5, Funny)
Assuming all the conspiracy theorists can be convinced it's true, at least this means I'll be dead before this idiocy crops up again.
Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Funny)
Funny.
According my reading of the calendar - it's right here on the wall, in my office - the whole thing goes tits-up, Dec 31, 2009!
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post is incredibly relevant considering that the Mayan calendar simply starts over at that time rather than predicting the end. The Apocalyptic prediction from the calendar was simply speculation that arose from not knowing the language. There's not exactly a Mayan Rosetta Stone so even all that we know about the language is still premature.
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. It's the Mayan Y2K bug. Good thing their calendar is based on mechanical circles. People discussing a 2012 apocalypse are discussing where a circle begins and ends.
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Funny)
Uh-oh, this is going to be a big problem for the United States since our entire fiscal policy is to deficit spend and avoid really solving any problems until the planet explodes in 2012. It is going to be mighty embarrassing when the debt collectors come a knockin' in 2013. "There's nobody home, go away!"
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Funny)
There's not exactly a Mayan Rosetta Stone so even all that we know about the language is still premature.
Oh, I think that if you'd consulted Dr Daniel Jackson, you may have received a more informed opinion.
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Informative)
We can go ahead and blame the Spanish for that. There are only 3 books containing Mayan Text still around today, all the rest were burned because they could contain "Heresay" (No one bothered to translate. Burn first ask questions later).
All of our calendars, even modern day ones, are just based off of Astrological occurences. We use 365 days for our Calendar because thats how long it takes the Earth to rotate around the sun. What if we decided to use different Stars and not the Sun?
Well basically the Mayan Calendar does this - They just use alot positions of Constellations to determine where they are in their cycle.
And as an educative side note: Without knowing yesterdays, todays, or tomorrows date, the current day of the week, Month of the year, or what year it currently is, one could still find out the date by simply measuring the stars position, and knowing the movement of the stars, and knowing what the sky looked like on ONE other night, and knowing the date that other night is occuring on. Time should be pretty precise too, as the stars move. It's fun to calculate what the sky will look like 3 months from now, and then see how accurate you are (with a bit of research)
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Funny)
It's fun to calculate what the sky will look like 3 months from now, and then see how accurate you are (with a bit of research)
We must have different ideas of fun.
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Informative)
Nor did they disappear. Mayans can still be found on any day on the Yucatan peninsula selling hammocks, fixing cars, running banks, building roads and so on. A little tour outside of Merida will show you people still living in sturdy houses made entirely of native materials. The Mayans, although occupied, are still largely alive and well.
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Informative)
There are people that speak something that descends from the mayan language, correct. That doesn't help us much in deciphering the written version of the language in hieroglyphics.
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most modern societies also worship corn - they just process the hell out of it first.
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Go to your local Walmart and count how many products contain "high fructose corn syrup"
Now who's the corn-worshiping culture?
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Informative)
When the Spaniards arrived, all codices and other writings containing any Mayan text were destroyed. The only real surviving literary text survives as a Spanish translation of a book called the Popol Vu [wikipedia.org], "Governing Book", (I speak a Mayan dialect, Q'eqchi'). The Wikipedia article there translates it as "Book of the Mat", which is a correct literal translation, but loses any contextual meaning. The root word 'pop' is indeed 'mat', but 'popal' has reference to the chief governing body of the people.
At any rate, to answer your question, all Mayan dialects have long since been Romanized, but it has only been in recent years (ten, perhaps) that efforts have been made to standardize the lithography across dialects.
It is interesting to note that the Christian conversion of the Mayan people brought about some surprising abnormalities (or outright perversions) in the spoken language itself. Even amongst the most pure speakers of Mayan dialects, Spanish has left its indelible mark. Take for example the word for 'people' in Q'eqchi': kristiaan. Any Spanish speaker would recognize the transliteration of that word as 'cristiano'. Therefore, in a very subtle way, you are not a person or a group of people unless you are in fact Christian. Crazy, huh?
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Re:Assuming... (Score:5, Funny)
I think it'd be reasonable to presume a modern day Mayan would be unable to communicate with an ancient Mayan due to generational changes in dialect and word-set
Not to mention the whole "being dead" thing.
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the Discovery channel (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:the Discovery channel (Score:5, Informative)
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What I found amazing... (Score:4, Interesting)
...was that I got halfway through the article before I realized I was viewing it through Google Translate. Yeah, I wasn't paying much attention. And yeah, I had noticed some errors -- but my mind just dismissed them as poor proofreading before publishing. I'm still impressed by how far online translation services have come from the early days of AltaVista Babelfish.
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Re:What I found amazing... (Score:5, Funny)
As an example, here's what *today's* Babelfish thinks of the article:
To be fed up: ' 2012' is just over two centuries
By: At Keulemans
In the film 2012 that this month in premiere, fall the cities and continents go at small woods, if the world fares. Toch moan that research has shown exactly that it ' end of the tijden' of 21 December 2012 there probably clears two centuries beside zit.
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No boom today... (Score:5, Funny)
Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
Re:No boom today... (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actually... (Score:4, Funny)
That's just what they want you to think.
+5 Informative. I agree. It's good to know what they want me to think. Wait what?
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Re:Actually... (Score:5, Funny)
No... it's a meta-mod joke. Moderators will often mod clearly funny paranoia "insightful" or "informative" to add to the comic value.
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Re:Actually... (Score:5, Funny)
No... it's a meta-mod joke. Moderators will often mod clearly funny paranoia "insightful" or "informative" to add to the comic value.
I've also heard of the mods giving Informative or Insightful posts a Funny mod - just to make you stop and wonder what the hell the joke was supposed to be.
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Greeeeeat..... (Score:5, Funny)
2220? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:2220? (Score:5, Funny)
Nope. The Sex and The City sequel comes out next spring.
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Re:2220? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:2220? (Score:5, Insightful)
So was...um...
Well, District 9 was good this year.
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Re:2220? (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean we have to endure another round of shitty movies in 2217?
Yes, of course you will. Why would you think 2217 would be different than any other year?
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From the virgin geeks - Thanks a lot! (Score:5, Funny)
On 2012-12-21, many geeks were about to have sex from the new agey women who believed that it was the last day of the Earth.
Re:From the virgin geeks - Thanks a lot! (Score:5, Funny)
I can imagine the geek that found out that the date was wrong: "Mmm. Either I can have sex for the first time, or I can tell the whole world they are wrong."
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Date divider (Score:4, Funny)
Every 25.8 years? That doesn't seem so spectacular. All we have to do is add 25.8 to the last doomsday and we'll know for certain. Did the last doomsday happen in 1994 or 1986? I don't remember either being particularly bad, except maybe for the music.
Didn't RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Amateurs (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh. Wait. It's not doomsday? It's just the end of the calendar cycle? Oh. Maybe the Mayan calendar's ending is the same thing and not the end of the world...
Yeah.
Wrong diagnosis (Score:5, Insightful)
major problems with the way the Maya Calendar is being read by doomsday prophets
When someone reads the Mayan Calendar and predicts the end of times... I don't think the date is the most important detail they got wrong.
Re:Wrong diagnosis (Score:4, Interesting)
Precisely. Hell, the *Mayans* didn't envision any doomsday scenarios. We don't even know for certain if the long count calendar cycles at 13 or 20 k'atuns (Mayan counting was base-20, though many scholars believe the calendar cycles after 13). Assuming 13, in Mayan culture the end of a cycle would be a major event, a time of celebration. Nothing in the archaeological record suggests they thought this world would end precisely 1 cycle after it began.
All this nonsense is just another way to scam the gullible. These doomsday criers are worse than the Y2K nuts. At least Y2K had a grain of truth to it (the rollover *could* have caused problems if it hadn't been patched in time).
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How do you debunk a myth? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How do you debunk a myth? (Score:5, Funny)
In short, you can't reason someone out of something they were not reasoned into.
... that approach can run into problems with myths and religious beliefs "No, it DID happen, but it was a SPIRITUAL end to the world" ...
That's when you make the sign of the Devil and tell them: "Glad to see you're still here. I'd like to be the first to officially welcome you to the team. I always enjoyed your work."
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My favorite thing about the 2012ers... (Score:5, Informative)
For example, on the west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of the text projects into the future to the 80th Calendar Round (CR) 'anniversary' of the famous Palenque ruler K'inich Janaab' Pakal's accession to the throne (Pakal's accession occurred on a Calendar Round date 5 Lamat 1 Mol, at Long Count 9.9.2.4.8 equivalent to 27 July 615 CE).[12] It does this by commencing with Pakal's birthdate 9.8.9.13.0 8 Ajaw 13 Pop (24 March 603 CE) and adding to it the Distance Number 10.11.10.5.8.[13] This calculation arrives at the 80th Calendar Round since his accession, a day that also has a CR date of 5 Lamat 1 Mol, but which lies over 4,000 years in the future from Pakal's time--the day 21 October in the year 4772. The inscription notes that this day would fall eight days after the completion of the 1st piktun [since the creation or zero date of the Long Count system], where the piktun is the next-highest order above the b'ak'tun in the Long Count. If the completion date of that piktun--13 October 4772--were to be written out in Long Count notation, it could be represented as 1.0.0.0.0.0. The 80th CR anniversary date, eight days later, would be 1.0.0.0.0.8 5 Lamat 1 Mol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar#2012_and_the_Long_Count [wikipedia.org]
Re:My favorite thing about the 2012ers... (Score:5, Funny)
Whew - I'm glad you cleared THAT up!
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Re:My favorite thing about the 2012ers... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:My favorite thing about the 2012ers... (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh thats good news (Score:4, Funny)
My credit card will be paid off by then making Minimum payments.
Article wrong, GMT correlation not wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The reason for all the hoopla about 2012, is that in the Maya Calendar, the last creation ended on a 13th Baktun. The lunatics suppose that since the last creation ended on a 13th Baktun, the Maya supposed that this creation would also end after 13 Baktuns, but there is no evidence that the Maya had any such beliefs. There is a date on the West Panel of the Temple of Inscriptions from Palenque that refers to an anniversary of the crowning of the king, Pacal, that makes it quite obvious that the Maya believed that there was a 14th through 20th Baktun.
So, in summary, these guys are wrong about the new correlation, and all the 2012 nutjobs are wrong about even the Maya believing that 2012 was the end of this creation. For more information, see the presentation on the FAMSI (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies) web site by Mark Van Stone that fully details what is known and what is true about Maya beliefs about 2012. http://www.famsi.org/research/vanstone/2012/index.html [famsi.org]
Re:Slashdotted link (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not another link to the original site, but in the NYT recently Errol Morris was researching an unrelated Civil War story, and one of the sources was David H. Kelly, who did major work deciphering the Mayan script. In passing Errol asked about the 2012 thing: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/whose-father-was-he-part-four/ [nytimes.com]
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Re:Damn (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh. As if they've never read or understood the verses in Mark 13:31, 32?
There are plenty of other passages to the same effect. They've read them, of course. They just conveniently ignore them.
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Re:Damn (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, why should that part of the bible be any different?
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Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
they usually have a few passages that they conveniently claim to mean something that they don't really, then they repeat those parts over and over to drown out anyone who contradicts them.
Almost everyone who calls themselves a "Christian" today does exactly this. They ignore all the contradictions, God-driven violence and slavery in the Old Testament, they ignore that Jesus said not one jot of the law would pass away, they ignore the prohibiition on divorce and remarriage, they ignore the contradictory accounts of the resurrection, they ignore Jesus' claim to have come to put the world to the sword...
The bits they don't ignore entirely they interpret bizarrely, typically dropping the Jewish context and inserting thier own fantasies.
It is unfortunately extremely difficult for people like this to even see the words on the page in front of them and interpret them as they would an ordinary text, which is all it is. The act of reading gets replaced by the act of interpretation, so that it is almost impossible for the person so aflicted to so much as consider the possibility that the words might have other meanings than the interpretation they are comfortable with.
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Re:Damn (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I'd like to explain a bit more in depth on that. It's an interesting story.
The Passover matzah is unleavened. It represents the bread which the Israelites took with them when they fled Egypt; in their haste they had no time to wait for bread to rise. Thus, unleavened bread.
The wine is an icon of the blood which was sprinkled on the doorposts of Israelite homes so that the angel of death would pass over their homes and spare their first-born sons when the sons of the Egyptians were killed. It was sprinkled in three places, on either side and above the doorframe.
The custom was for the youngest at the meal to sit next to the teacher or elder (who would be at the head of the table, wherever that was). The youngest would ask what each symbol meant, and the elder would explain it. This was to commemorate the Jews' escape from Egypt.
Instead of following the standard script, Jesus said the bread was his body and the wine his blood. Then he completely changed the focus by saying they were to do it in remembrance of him – not the escape from Egypt! No doubt this caused a good deal of puzzlement in everyone present...
Then Jesus was eventually crucified, and the blood on the cross matched up with blood on either side and above the doorway in the original plague in Egypt – tying the whole thing together and showing that it was a prophetic sign of Christ from the beginning.
Even if you don't believe it, and I have no doubt you don't (and I'm not trying to convince anyone), it's a fascinating marriage between Judaism and Christianity. All the original Christians were Jews, remember.
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