2012 News

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Ever wondered when and how the whole 2012 thing entered our consciousness? Here’s a (non-comprehensive) overview of how it all fell into place:

• Ancient Times - the Mayans (or some earlier civilization) created the Long Count calendar, which ends on Dec 21 2012
• 1897 - Joseph Goodman (Mark Twain’s first editor), published a paper proposing the 3114 BC start date
• 1937 - J. Eric Thompson publishes the GMT (Goodman Martinez Thompson) Correlation, confirming the 3114 BC start date, and therefore the Dec 21 2012 end date
• 1975 - several books are published that refer to 2012, including The Transformative Vision by José Argüelles and The Invisible Landscape by Terence McKenna
• 1996 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock first suggests the idea of 2012 being the End of the World in the form of a global cataclysm
• 1998 - Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 by John Major Jenkins introduces the concept of a Galactic Alignment
• 2000 - The launch of Survive 2012, the first website devoted to the 2012 doomsday scenario. Geoff Stray’s compendium of all things 2012, Diagnosis 2012, followed shortly after.
• 2006 - Decoding the Past: Mayan Doomsday Prophecy airs on the History Channel, the first of many similar documentaries
• 2006 - 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck
• 2006 - 2012 Forum website launched
• 2008 - Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civilization’s End by Lawrence E. Joseph
• 2009 - The Hollywood blockbuster movie 2012 causes discussion of the topic everywhere from CNN to Playboy magazine

Mayan

War and famine are regularly provided as explanations for the demise of the ancient Mayan civilization. Now, a study of garbage pits by archaeologist Kitty Emery of the Florida Museum of Natural History shows that political unrest is the more likely cause.

The only time that hunting populations of large animals appear to have headed south, based on the garbage pits, is the earliest era, when the region was first colonized by the Maya, Emery says. “Pretty quickly, things stabilized and stayed that way, in what looks to have been a managed fashion, for a long time,” she says.

Studies of human remains led by Texas A&M’s Lori Wright have also shown scant evidence of dietary changes during the collapse period in Petexbatun, finding no evidence of the anemia of increased child mortality at two sites.

Read more »

Authors

Patrick Geryl, best-selling author from Belgium, was recently interviewed by the Camelot team of Bill Ryan and Kerry Cassidy. It is a long interview, but gives a great insight into Geryl and his ideas. Recently Geryl was part of a team that used ground-penetrating radar to prove that below a probable site for the fabled labyrinth are indications that it is actually buried beneath. Flooding of the site is problematic, but Zahi Hawass has said that the site will be excavated. If Geryl is correct, they will find ancient records of great importance.

Here’s the interview on YouTube:

Articles

Hollywood movie 2012 is providing the 2012 meme with a lot of attention, from such diverse magazines as Playboy (last month) and now Sky and Telescope:

Noted archaeoastronomer E. C. Krupp explains all the details, and the history of this mania, in the cover story of the November 2009 issue of Sky & Telescope, now available at a newsstand near you.

At Space Daily we get a larger taste of what the article covers:

If you believe what you hear, writes Krupp, “The ancient Maya of Mexico and Guatemala kept a calendar that is about to roll up the red carpet of time, swing the solar system into transcendental alignment with the heart of the Milky Way, and turn Earth into a bowling pin for a rogue planet heading down our alley for a strike.”

Krupp explains the realities, the many falsehoods, and the mixed exaggerations of astronomy and the Maya calendar system that supposedly combine to predict catastrophe. Krupp also reviews other recent end-of-the-world astro-manias: the “Jupiter Effect” doomsday of 1982, the “Harmonic Convergence” overthrow of the old world order in 1987, and the “5-5-2000″ planet-alignment catastrophe predicted for 2000. Interestingly, some of the same people and their notions were behind these erroneous predictions too.

“As we approach 2012, more and more professional and amateur astronomers are being asked about the doomsday scenario, so we want to help educate them, so they can inform the general public,” says Sky and Telescope Editor in Chief Robert Naeye.

“Dr. Krupp’s article thoroughly demolishes this pseudoscience drivel, and serves as an outstanding resource for scientists, educators, and the media.”

A summary of Krupp’s debunking can be found at Griffith Observatory.

Opinion

Ever wondered when and how the whole 2012 thing entered our consciousness? Here’s a (non-comprehensive) overview of how it all fell into place:

• Ancient Times - the Mayans (or some earlier civilization) created the Long Count calendar, which ends on Dec 21 2012
• 1897 - Joseph Goodman (Mark Twain’s first editor), published a paper proposing the 3114 BC start date
• 1937 - J. Eric Thompson publishes the GMT (Goodman Martinez Thompson) Correlation, confirming the 3114 BC start date, and therefore the Dec 21 2012 end date
• 1975 - several books are published that refer to 2012, including The Transformative Vision by José Argüelles and The Invisible Landscape by Terence McKenna
• 1996 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock first suggests the idea of 2012 being the End of the World in the form of a global cataclysm
• 1998 - Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 by John Major Jenkins introduces the concept of a Galactic Alignment
• 2000 - The launch of Survive 2012, the first website devoted to the 2012 doomsday scenario. Geoff Stray’s compendium of all things 2012, Diagnosis 2012, followed shortly after.
• 2006 - Decoding the Past: Mayan Doomsday Prophecy airs on the History Channel, the first of many similar documentaries
• 2006 - 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck
• 2006 - 2012 Forum website launched
• 2008 - Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civilization’s End by Lawrence E. Joseph
• 2009 - The Hollywood blockbuster movie 2012 causes discussion of the topic everywhere from CNN to Playboy magazine