bmpbmp, here's a little scenario to illustrate the point.

Homestar Runner went to Bubs' Concession Stand and asked for a hot dog. Bubs told him it would be ready in 50 years. Bubs was using the Mayan calendar, which told him the year was currently 12732, so the hotdog would be ready when Bubs' calendar said it was 12782. Homestar Runner looked at his own calendar, the one we use, and saw that the current year was 1957, so he reasoned that the hot dog would be ready in the year 2007. He stood in line for 10 minutes, then heard a news announcement on the radio. It said that all the calendars we use were wrong, and the year is actually 2007 already.

Is the hot dog ready?

Edited: just changed the years a bit.

These are serious questions.

What does it matter if the calendar is off five years? Is there a major scientific of historical breakthrough waiting if someone proves that the calendar is off five years? And who cares which calendar is off?

It all depends on which calendar you use. If our beggining date was the First Flight, it would be the year 104.

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I am absolutely not saying that. I am saying by the most widely accepted correlation between the Mayan calendar and our own, that the Mayan date of 13,0,0,0,0 in the long count (the start of the next baktun in the Mayan long count - if you don't know what that means, check this out) will happen on our date of December 23, 2012. But I am also saying that there is not a complete agreement among those who study the issue, though I have seen no reference to it being off by five years (most of the differences are a couple of days). You need to look at the links in my previous post if you want the details.

But, most importantly, I am saying (as did Van) that IT DOESN'T MATTER. There is absolutely no evidence that there is anything significant to 13,0,0,0,0 in the Mayan calendar, particularly regarding the end of the world or any similar event. The Mayans were amazingly brilliant people, but they had no magic insight to this, any more than the creators of the Julian or Gregorian calendar (see laurele's post above). And last I checked, the world didn't end in 2000, 1900, or 1000 AD.

The Mayan civilization ended around 900 AD, so by their calender or our own, the end came a long time ago.

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ok i think i may be dumb cause i am still confused...lol

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I'll try to simplify.

Calendars each just start counting at some arbitrary day. To connect one calendar to another, you need a single day for which each calendar gives a date. So you need a historical record that says "June 16, 1320 A.D. is also Smarch 43rd, 24,601 on Bob's Calendar." If you have that, and you know how each calendar counts days, months, weeks, years, fortnights, or whatever, then you can count forward and backward in each calendar to reconcile any date.

IIRC, the work done to connect the Maya calendar to our Gregorian calendar was all done in relatively modern dates. So it doesn't matter that we now think Jesus may have been born in some year other than the Zero Year of the Gregorian Calendar. As long as we keep using the same "wrong" dates that the scientists worked out, the correspondence holds between the Maya and Gregorian calendars.

So the "magic" date at which the Maya calendar's odometer rolls over is still 2012 A.D. in our current "wrong" reckoning.

If you want to reset the origin of the Gregorian calendar to account for the new postulated birth year of Jesus, then that might make this year 2012 V.A.D (vero anno Domini, in the "real year of the Lord"). But then you'd have to go back and re-do the connection to the Maya calendar according to the new reckoning, which would change the "magic" Maya date to 2017 V.A.D.

No matter how you slice and dice the Gregorian calendar, the "magic" Maya date is still five years away from now.

Now there's a separate issue whether the Maya writings actually predict that something dire will happen when their calendar rolls over. The old writings say that the last time something Mayanly icky happened, it was on a previous calendar rollover. That doesn't mean the next calendar rollover portends something disastrous.

Then of course you may choose not to believe Mayan mysticism at all.

But this year doesn't "really" have to be 2012. It's 2007 because we say it is.

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And just to emphasize, the Mayan calendar doesn't end in five years anyway; it rolls over. There are enough different counts of calendars out there that some kind of rollover happens all the time, but we don't know about it, because we don't know those calendars. Seven years ago, there was a rollover of the Gregorian calendar. People predicted the end of the world. Nothing happened. Five years from now, there will be a rollover of the Mayan calendar. People are predicting the end of the world. There is no reason to assume that anything will happen. When the Jewish or Islamic calendars next roll over, we'll go through the same thing again.

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So is the Mayan calendar synchronized to specific celestial events, some of which haven't happened yet, which is how we know that it hasn't "ended" yet?

bmpbmp is just looking for something to worry about. My friend, if you want to worry, put on a blindfold and try to cross a busy street. That will give you plenty of worry, mostly during and hopefully after.

To summarize: The Mayan calendar rolls over (not ends) in a little over five years from now (exact date is subject to some debate). No matter what we call our current date, be it 2007, 2012, or 28,734,873, it's still five years away from *now*.

Fred

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And Mitra!

No.

It's synchronized like our calendar is synchronized. Our "thing" happens every year. Their thing happens every day--and we use that one too. They count the days using base twenty arithmetic, except their second digit only goes to 17 instead of 19, so 1 0 0 is 360 days, about one year. 1 0 0 0 0 would then be 144,000 days, or about 395 years. They apparently started counting sometime in 3114 BC.

The Popol Vuh says the just previous creation ended on 12 19 19 17 19, which was the day before 13 0 0 0 0 (13 x 395 years, which happens to correspond to our December 21, 2012). IF this current creation cycle follows the pattern of the last creation cycle, it will end on Dec. 20, 2012. Kinda like a huge Friday the thirteenth, where everyone has a bad day.

Posted on rec.humor.funny:

Nick

ETA: w00t! I'm not a "Junior Member" anymore!!111!!

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It also means that for 1063 years the Jewish people weren't hungry again an hour after eating.

All calendars should start from the day MSG was discovered.

Re the original question "What Year are we in[?]", we're in the same year as everyone else. Only the number lines have been changed to protect the guilty and hide the Illuminati. The world will end at the same time for everyone, except for the states of Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Nation) and Hawaii and the territories of Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, and certain remote parts of Canada.

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Which provides the point. Our calendar started 2007 years ago. We count forward from then. The Jewish calendar started 5768 years ago. They count forward from then. The Chinese calendar started 4702 years ago. They count forward from then. The Mayan calendar started over something like 5000 years ago, and counts forward until it "ends." It "ends" in 5 years.

So the "end" of the Mayan calendar is in our year 2012.
So the "end" of the Mayan calendar is in the Jewish year 5773.
So the "end" of the Mayan calendar is in the Chinese year 4707.
With your friend's correction that it is now 2012, the "end" of the Mayan calendar is in 2017, still 5 years from now.
In Argos-land, the end of the Mayan calendar is in year 49, still 5 years from now.

Do you understand, bmpbmp?

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Jay, you lost me on "arbitrary".

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Dionesius Exegesis made a little mistake, and look what happened!! All this hoopla over an ancient calendar, and the woo woos are raking in the loot!!

Dale

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