Only he got it completely wrong, and the Mayan cycle really ended a few years ago.
I'll admit I'm fascinated by this constant need to try to prefigure apocalypse. If it's not the imminent end of the world, it's the antichrist. Or maybe some variation of ascension into paradise by way of the return of Jesus, the Rapture, the arrival of the space people, or a technological singularity.
Also available on video.
Astonishingly, the date of Mother Shipton's predicted end of the world appears to have been shifted to 2012.
Still, it all came in useful when some blithering child of sick fundamentalist parents started scaring my daughter by telling her she wasn't going to live to get to high school because God Was Coming.
My own experience and ten minutes on the internet proving how many people had made themselves look really stupid with these predictions soon cheered her up.
And if she had any residual worries, I should think three years of high school has pretty much wiped them out.
There is actually a whole other 2012 contingent that doesn't think it wil be the end of the world, just an ending or change in how we view something. I think they mean other than 2012 prophecies. ;-) Kind of like how the Internet/Web changed communication and commerce, only on more of a psychological/spiritual scale.
The beginning of the last Baktun saw, possibly, the emergence of modern humans. The oldest dated remains found at Crô Magnon are around 35.000 years old. You can't be me, I'm taken
Or a culture looking for patterns over any many generations. I don't think we, today, have any idea what it feels like to be part of an ongoing effort to find patterns in the celestial or terrrestrial - over hundreds, if not thousands of years.
The only thing that was important to the Mayans (for example), imo, was that there HAD to be a Tellurian pattern. It was beyond preservation. You can't be me, I'm taken
