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THE FINAL COUNTDOWN FROM PAGE 23
known. Meso-American star charting
started around 680 B.C.E. by the Olmec
civilization that lived in what are now
the Mexican states of Veracruz and
Tabasco.
Christopher Pool, a professor of arche-
ology at the University of Kentucky and
author of Olmec Archaeology and Early
Mesoamerica, explains that the Olmec
eventually shared their knowledge of
star tracking with the Mayans, who had
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already been tracking the winter solstice,
most likely for planting crops, to create
calendars.
"At some point, the Mayans developed
the belief that our sun is a god and that
the Milky Way, which they called the
"Sacred Tree," was a gateway to the after-
life," Pool explains. "After learning from
the Olmecs, the Mayans began keeping
records of the stars' patterns of move-
ment and continued to do so for the next
200-300 years before they developed
their own calendar [known as the Long
Count calendar] around 355 B.C.E."
The Mayans, using empirical observa-
tion and numerical aptitude to calculate
the future movements of stars across the
sky, inadvertently discovered that Earth's
wobbling as it spins on its axis affects
the tracking of stars' patterns of move-
ment. The practical effect of the wobble,
known as precession, is that it causes
celestial patterns of movement to drift
gradually in the sky during a 5,125-year
cycle.
Also discovered by the Mayans is that
one time every cycle, the dark band at
the center of the Milky Way (called the
Galactic Equator) intersects with the
Elliptical (the plane of the sun's move-
ment across the sky). During that year,
the sun reaches its solstice — a moment
when the sun's position in the sky is at
its greatest angular distance on the other
side of the equatorial plane from the
observer (on Dec. 21 for the Northern
Hemisphere and June 21 for the South-
ern Hemisphere) — at the moment of
the conjunction of the Galactic Equator
with the Milky Way. The year this occurs,
in relation to our Gregorian calendar, is
2012 C.E.; it last happened on Aug. 11,
3114 B.C.E.
As Pool explains it, with Mayan
mythology teaching that the sun is a
god and the Milky Way is the gateway
to life and death, the Mayans concluded
that the previous intersection must have
been the moment of creation. Hiero-
glyphs discovered in Mayan ruins seem
to indicate that they believed the next
intersection, in 2012, would be some sort
of ending and new beginning of a cycle.
For some perspective, though, Pool
says, "The Mayans also believed that the
blood of human sacrifices was what pow-
ered the sun and gave it life
Internet doomsday sites almost invari-
ably cite a Mayan "prophecy" regarding
the end of that cycle. But "there is no
specific Mayan prophecy," states Bruce
Scofield, Mayan astrology expert, author
and geosciences instructor at the Univer-
sity of Massachusetts Amherst. "They're
making it up," he says, referring to what
he calls "self-appointed non-native Ma-
yan prophets."
Anthony Aveni, the Russell Colgate
Distinguished University Professor of
Astronomy and Anthropology at Colgate
University in New York, and author of
The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of
2012 ($19.95; University Press of Colo-
rado; 200 pp.) says, "We have a habit of
projecting our own Western predilec-
tions on other cultures."
Mayan writing, he adds, contains
"virtually no mention of future time.
The Mayans were very past directed, not
future directed." The end of the calendar
cycle represents no more than "the next
overturn of the cycle of time'
Aveni says there are 3,264 books on
2012 and maybe two or three of them
are scholarly. "If you want to learn about
the Mayans, you shouldn't buy the oth-
ers," he says. Those books include Mark
van Stone's Science 0 Prophecy of the
Ancient Maya ($60; Tlacaelel Press; 172
pp.) and 2012 and the End of the World:
The Western Roots of the Mayan Apoca-
lypse by Matthew Reston and Amara
Solari ($16.95; Rowman & Littlefield;
149 pp).
WHAT SAYETH YOU, HASHEM?
"People who predict the end of the
world are just trying to rip you off," says
Pastor Paul Langford of the First Baptist
Church of Westchester in Southern
California, noting that the biblical pun-
ishment for false prophecy is stoning.
"They're taking advantage of people and
taking advantage of their fears."
In the Gospel of Matthew, for ex-
ample, Langford says that Jesus states:
"But about that day or hour no one
knows, not even the angels in heaven,
nor the Son, but only the Father?'
He adds, "as we look at the shape of
the world, every century looks more like
[the time of] Revelation than the previ-
ous one."
The Book of Revelation is the last
book of the New Testament and con-
tains St. John's account of his vision of
the apocalypse.
In it, the Lamb (Jesus) opens the
seven seals of a scroll, releasing the
Four Horsemen (commonly understood
to represent Conquest, War, Famine
and Death), the cries of the martyrs,
cataclysmic events and, finally, seven
judgments.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus'
disciples ask, "What will be the sign of
your coming and of the end of the age?"
His response: "Nation will rise against
nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
There will be famines and earthquakes
in various places. All these are the be-
ginning of birth pains."
These verses have led would-be
prophets throughout recorded history
to surmise that harbingers of the events
foretold in Revelation have arrived, says
Langford.
Jewish tradition, which eschews the
fire and brimstone of its offshoot breth-
ren, holds that in order for the Mes-
siah to make his appearance on Earth,
certain things must be achieved before
the world can enter the "Messianic Age."
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