Why is the MAYAN CALENDAR END-DATE so significant?
340219
The Mayan calendar does not predict the end of the world on Dec 12th 2012. \nThe exact date of the end of the current Mayan Long Count is still a matter of debate amongst Mayan scholars, although it is likely to be around Dec 21 2012. \nThe Mayan calendar is cyclical, and there are names for cycles longer than 13 bactuns of the Long Count which are coming to an end in 2012. \nEven if the Mayans did believe that the world would come to an end at the end of the Long Count, there is no reason to assume that they have any special knowledge which would allow them to make this prediction correctly. You are free to believe the Sun won't come up tomorrow, but it will anyway.... \n\n\nThe fact that the winter solstice on 2012 is "aligned" with the plane of the Galaxy has no significance. \nIt takes the winter solstice 700-1400 years to cross the plane of the Galaxy. \nThe solstice last year (2005) was within 0.1 degrees (or 1/5th the size of the Sun) of where it will be on 2012. \nThe Sun crosses the plane of the Milky Way twice every year with no ill effect.
796116
The Mayans didn't say it would end but that it would be a time of great change.\n\nThis is the fourth time and the last according to the Mayans, the one before being the flood.
1006167
Mayan and Egyptian prophecies, which have been pretty accurate so far, state that in 2012 there will be a huge devastation, one in which the earth has encountered many times before.  There is suppose to be a polar shift followed by a comet. It is suppose to devestate the human race and leave very few to pick up the peices.  Not necessarily something you could prepare for, but at least if it started up you could be mentally prepared.  But who knows, there are many prophecies about worldly devastations.
671235
True, it IS the conclusion of the Maya calendar, (based on a beginning of it several thousand years earlier, which I can't fathom, since they were not even around then to start a calendar).\n\nNevertheless, on this date, "the precession of the equinox", as I understand it, reaches its next ending revolution amongst the stars,(along the celestal equator), completing the circuit after 26,000+ years.  \n\nSo, THIS IS THE BIG EVENT, astronomically speaking.  So this will be the ending of something, (and the beginning also of the next 26,000+ year circuit).\n\nI've asked the question:, "When was this point in the sky\nestablished and by whom?", but no one has been able to answer it yet.\n\nAnd, I'm not wanting to be pessimistic, but this old world will be lucky to last till 2012, the way things are going, worldwide.
953516
some of those civilizatrions sounded rather sophisticated yet brutal...  kinda like having two ball players play and killing the losers?  The Incas Aztecs and Mayans were descendents of people who spead out from Babel after the flood\n\ninterestingly the Mayan Calender goes back to roughly 56 years shorter than the 4004BC calender of Bishop Ussher. Sounds familiar... why might that be  having Calienders dating to the Bbilical creation on the other side of the world almost as if people spread out from Babel at one time after the flood.
668389
All I know is that the Mayan calender ends in 2012, same as the Bible matrix claims the Earth will end in a fiery blast.
1056696
Expected occurrence.\n\nAnyway it's not happening today. Today's date is 06/06/2006.\n\nYou're too late for 06/06/06. \nWho knows what the Apocalypse was like then, especially when a) all the apocalyptic rubbish hadn't been written yet, and b) the years weren't going to have numbers assigned to them for a couple of hundred years.  (That is the current calendar system, the Hebrew and Chinese calendars were doing just fine, thank you very much.)
682036
See what ignorance religion inspires!  Maybe intelligent design will be taught in school that day.  The days of the calendar are meaningless.  6000 years ago, the Egyptians used a 360 day calendar.  The Romans used a calender with months having 29 or 31 days because they were superstitious!!! LOL  Cesar came along and changed the calendar again.  (Julian Calendar).  Then in the 1500's they realized that Cesar screwed up the year so much that it needed fixing.  So now we use the Gregorian calendar.  Either way, you can't equate 6/6/06 to any historical occurrence of equal opposite happening to Jesus's birth.  the fact that we celebrate 12/25/xx is ludicrous.  Plus, there is no calendar year zero.  It jumps from 1 BC to 1 AD.
717179
The word "Mayan" refers specifically to the language used by the Maya peoples of central America.\n\nThe peoples and their culture are correctly known as "Maya", not "Mayan"...   as in "A Maya artifact".
399938
It's all arguable was to when it was written. Western scholars dated the time within the time frame of the date given by archeologist and historians of Europe at the time which were fixing all time to fit within Western thought (thus the begining of the world was with the Garden of Eden and there was a year already established that this occured...therefore all other dates that differed from this had to be changed....sadly while most of the Western world has updated its dates, the eastern history is still not been changed in most reference books....and eastern civilizations are very old and to account for this, because Western science says that all civilization began in Egypt and Mesopotamia...and then of course with the Garden of Eden...the dates of eastern civilizations again have been changed and are still not fixed). Thus some say that the Vedas were written down in 5000BCE, some 1500BCE, some in 500BCE, some in 500AD. Basically, it's all still being debated, but atleast scholars now acknowledge that the Rig Veda is the oldest sacred text and ancient literature in existence. That atleast has been agreed upon. Otherwise, just remember when reading anything about eastern religions that the dates will vary. If you speak to easterners who have retained their tradition telling of the time it is usually much closer to what is believed to be accurate (like the birth of Buddha, etc) than what Western scholars currently have set.
1128918
There are always prophesies about the world ending. When one doesn't come true and time passes on then society starts looking for the next clue - or the old prophecy is reinterpreted! I think science beats them all, since they predicted that if we did not change our ways the Earth would make us suffer. Now we are seeing its true - though science says we are too late to change anything now. I guess we'll see who was right when the time comes!  I think the world will end just as science says, by catastrophic global changes, and that will happen on a big enough scale to finally end us all on the date the Mayan calender runs out...... :)  Or it could be 6-26-06...who knows?!!\n\nIn the meantime check out this prediction: http://www.theworkofgod.org/Pope/saint_malachy_prophecies.htm
644321
Yes. Something very important is going to happen on that date. And I am serious about it AND I could prove it to you, if that were necessary. As a matter of fact, I've known this for a long time, now. But I have never thought it was so important for other people, so I never considered sharing this information. Not until recently, anyway, when so many people started all of a sudden to show their concern about what is awaiting humanity on that date.\n\nSo I think this needs to be said once and for all, so that everybody knows, and the world can decide what to do about it. Ladies and gentlemen, according to irrefutable documents which are in a safe place now, so they are not misplaced, and after a very quick and not very difficult calculation, I have come to the revealing conclusion that on Tuesday 6th. June, 2006, it is going to be my birthday, and I am going to be thirty-five years old.
707969
I know that most other people who answered this question have no clue what they are talking about.\nThere is not just one "Mayan calendar" there are many.  When all the calendars are used together (like we may follow the regular calendar and also a religious calendar), they are very accurate and can predict eclipses and plantary cycles.\nMy favorite is the 260 sacred/ritual calendar, but when people post on here about the "Mayan calendar" they mean the Long Count.  There isn't anything mystical about it. It's basically an odometer of days, except that it goes to 20 in each place instead of 10 (well, one only goes to 18, just to be confusing). Today is 12.19.13.14.5 on that time meter.\nThe big thing everyone is talking about is the so-called end date.  I don't understand the hype.  Time doesn't end and calendars don't end.  What is happening is, on 12-21-2012, the long count date will be 13.00.00.00.00 (pretty cool, like our calendar going from 1999 to 2000).  Yes, 13 was a sacred number to the Maya and yes, the date would have been significant to them.  BUT that column of the "odometer" goes to 20, and even then another column can be addded.\nThere is no "prediction" inherent in a column of numbers, except how many days away a certain number combination is.\nThere IS something going on that day,however.  There's a grand astronomical alignment between the sun and the milky way at dawn which to the Maya would have signified rebirth of the sun and the dawning of a new age.  As usual that has been twisted around by the ignorant fear-mongers to mean our world is ending in a cataclysm on that date.  It's an ENERGETIC rebirth,  not a phsyical one and we don't have to die in fire to have a new beginning.\n--the spell checker isn't working, sorry for any errors
127363
No, there isn't. And the Mayas didn't predict the end of the world.\n They were so advanced in cosmology that they created a 10.000 years calendar to predict solar and lunar solstis, for sacrefices, war, games....\n The Maya calendar stop at the 21-23 december 2012,it's on the same date that our solar system will be aline perfectly with the milky way.( we are right now under it )\n For them it was the end of an era, not the world. They said that with this phenomena, humanity will go from darkness into the light and open new frontier for us to explore.\nIn fact all the texts on the subject are not totally translated so nobody knows, when that happens, what will happen.\n No end of the world just a prediction like Y2K and other...
133309
Before a standard calendar, generally dates were refered to by who-ever was in charge and by the month of the season.  So today would be:\n\nThe 10th day of the 2nd month of the 6th year of the Presidency of George W. Bush.\n\nIt gets a little confusing, but is fairly accruate.\n\nBCE came into being when people realized that not everyone accepted AD (anno domini - Year of God in Latin).  In fact there are several calendars out there.  so BCE and CE have been accepted as the "norm" for all dates in anthropology and archaeology.\n\nI think Rome came up with the first one for months, but still refered to the years as "in the reign of [insert name here]"
936639
The end of the 13th b'ak'tun is conjectured to have been of great significance to the Maya, but does not necessarily mark the end of the world according to their beliefs, but a new beginning or time of re-birth. According to the Popol Vuh, a book compiling details of creation accounts known to the Quiché Maya of the colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world. The Popol Vuh describes the first three creations that the gods failed in making and the creation of the successful fourth world where men were placed. The Maya believed that the fourth world would end in catastrophe and the fifth and final world would be created that would signal the end of mankind.\n\nThe last creation ended on a long count of 13.0.0.0.0. Another 13.0.0.0.0 will occur on December 21, 2012, and it has been discussed in many New Age articles and books that this will be the end of this creation or something else entirely. However, the Maya abbreviated their long counts to just the last five vigesimal places. There were an infinite number of larger units that were usually not shown. When the larger units were shown (notably on a monument from Coba), the end of the last creation is expressed as 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0, where the units are obviously supposed to be 13s in all larger places. In this age we are only approaching 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.13.0.0.0.0, and the larger places are nowhere near the 13s that would match the end of the last creation. (Schele and Friedel 1990: 430)\n\nThis is confirmed by a date from Palenque, which projects forward in time to 1.0.0.0.0.0, which will occur on October 13, 4772 (a Friday). The Classic Period Maya likely did not believe that the end of this age would occur in 2012. According to the Maya, there will be a baktun ending in 2012, a significant event being the end of a 13th 400 year period, but not the end of the world.\n\nclick here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_calendar
1045637
Because it is a countdown to the Birth of Christ since any other point in history would be arbitrary and there would still be time before it.\n\nIt was obviously assigned the denotation BC and re-numbered well after 0 BC/AD.