Can anyone please kind of debunk this one for me? I have a friend who is absolutly convinced that the Mayans predicted this in 2012, and shes gone so far as to start building an underground shelter of some sort for it. I cant seem to convince her that this is utter nonsense, but she believes it because she belives anything with the title "ancient prophesy" and what not..sorry the post is somewhat confusing im very tired heh...Thank you in advance

well, can you point out to her that the calendar doesn't end, it rolls over? would that help? also point out that the Mayan civilization would be all the Mayans would realistically care about, and Mayan civilization as we think of it has been gone for centuries.

there's more than that, obviously, but that's a start. I know this has been discussed a lot, but I can't remember any specific threads to tell you to check. (also remember that the Mayans had neither magnets nor knowledge of glaciers, so what would they know about a pole shift or an ice age?)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

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hi, actually the magnetic pole shifts all the time. There are corrections made regularly for magnetic navigation.

Thanks for your replies ya'll...shes kinda wierd like that, but shes a bit too into the mystic mighty powers of the ancient americans! as she puts it quite seriously.

i spent many years studying wacky fringe science and esoterica.

i've never thought that there should be anything special about the 2012 date of the mayans.

basically it just seemed to be the same as any calender..ie: it has to end at some point (just like our calenders end at december 31).

if there is an ice age coming...it will take a while to make itself known....but building a shelter in a spot that you think will freeze over is useless....your friend (and the rest of us) would be better off moving nearer to the equator if this happens.

this could also be a reason for the sudden emergence of the early civilisations in the northern hemisphere...ie: egypt, sumeria, harappa/mohenjo-daro, sian.

if there had been an extended "hot spell", people would have moved north and south away from the equator.
later when things cooled down they would have moved back towards the equator and set up new civilisations...which they would have had plenty of time to prepare for..hence the sudden blossoming of fully organised cities.

note that all the above city states/civilisations were built around 30dg north...a spot that's just right temperature-wise.

Hmm i never realized that before Madman, about the civilisations being built appr. the same longitude, (forgive me if i got that term wrong im so tired right now) but im trying very hard to convince her of it, but shes stubborn like that. Thanks for all your help.

Tell her that if she's that scared, she should move to Hawai'i. Though if she moves to O'ahu she'll be broke pretty quick.

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If the ice age comes, she may find her shelter under a glacier. That ought to put a chill on things.

I have heard the end of the worl in 2012 when the Mayan calendar ends, but I have not yet heard it linked to an ice age as the vehicle for said end.

"the end of the world" is usually a subjective opinion.

the etruscans thought they had a set period to "thrive in"...and then it would all end.

a similar situation can be applied to the roman empire if "revelations" is taken as being predictive of their fate.

at the end of the day..the world didn't really end...just "civilisation as they knew it".

ie: there's still plenty of italians around...just no roman empire.

these "end of the world predictions are a perrenial"...lol.

if you take a space-science perspective...you could envision that "the end of the world" (around 2012) could be the end of being limited to just one world.

Well, let's put it that way. Mayan calendar goes in "cycles". Every time "cycle" ended and new started, a globad disaster occurred, almoust wiping away mankind. According to Mayans at least... Was it global flood, huge fires etc etc. So, rather then worring about what's ahead, let's look a bit backwards and have a glance of previous times the world ended.

Now, one cycle is about 4000 years. So the previous destruction of the world should have happened in about 2000 BC.

To make things more certain, let's take a previous end of the world, that must have happened around 6000 BC. Of that date, we have no written memories, but also there is no evidence of something global happening. End of the world usually should leave a quite large destruction front for us to discover, but nothing!

Same goes for 2000 BC. Nothing in particular happened. No global floods, volcanoes erupting, not even a single meteorite coming down. Nuttin' at all. My theory is that humankind was on the edge of extinction due to sheer boredom of nothing happening, but then someone invited beer and deck of cards. Thus, friday night poker saved the world! Or nothing really happened, take your pick.

So, if the next Mayan end of the world passes as unnoticed as the previous ones, we have nothing to worry about. Still, perhaps we could make a nice "happy end of the world party" and celebrate.

yes...again..it's all subjective.

there were a lot of christians around 1000ad that thought the world was going to end at that point in time.

Madman, not to mention that lot of people though world would end at 2000 AD

yeah...these end of the world scenarios can be a bit spooky too.

back in the late 70s there was a prediction that it was all going to end....there were interviews on tv with people who said they were going off to live on a desert island...etc.

i went to school the next day feeling a bit uneasy about things.

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5/5/2000 might be the one you are talking about..there was a book on the subject that even (i think) had a supposed confirmation of the possibility by einstein.

IIRC, isn't the end of the Mayan "long count" more about progress and evolution (or, considering the current culture of the area, revolution) than endings?

Besides, the poles don't "shift" the way the woowoos think they do - and that's not the cause of ice ages.

- Maha "shift doesn't happen" Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

I think the woo-woo term "pole shift" is used where the more appropiate Pole Flip is needed.

The sun does it several times in a century.

Just tell her that she'll have to buy new maps or simply flip all the ones she has now, upside down.

Tell her that the pole has shifted and flipped many times in the past and there were no ill effects.

Tell her the mayans predicted that the last sun would end in earthquakes in 2012 and that her underground shelter would be useless. She needs a weather balloon to be safe.

Also, tell her that if she's going to listen to ancient propehsies, she should listen to them properly and not try to jumble them up with modern doomsday predictions involving antural causes that don't even cause actual harm.