Eight years ago, the world was supposed to end. At least that’s what some interpreters of the ancient Maya calendar believed. They noted that the Maya Long Count calendar seemed to be running out of days, and would end on Dec. 21, 2012. Various doomsday scenarios, asteroids featuring prominently among them, were forecast.
Of course, the winter solstice of 2012 came and went with little to show for it. The Maya calendar simply ticked over to a new b’ak’tun, equal to about 394 years, and the world continued.
The obsession with the Maya calendar and doomsday makes sense from one perspective. After all, Maya religious observances did rely heavily on their amazingly accurate calendar. But the year 2012 likely never figured into Maya eschatology, the study of end times — that one was all us.
