MEXICO CITY (AP) — Seize the day.
Only 52 weeks and a day are left before Dec. 21, 2012, when some believe the Maya predicted the end of the world.
Unlike enthusiasts of other doomsday theories who suggest putting together survival kits, southeastern Mexico, the heart of Maya territory, plans a yearlong celebration.
Mexico's tourism agency expects to draw 52 million visitors by next year only to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche. All of Mexico usually lures about 22 million foreigners in a year.
It's selling the date, the Winter Solstice in the coming year, as a time of renewal. Many archeologists argue that the 2012 reference on a 1,300-year-old stone tablet only marks the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar.
"The world will not end. It is an era," said Yeanet Zaldo, a tourism spokeswoman for the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun. "For us, it is a message of hope."
Cities and towns in the Mayan region on Wednesday will start the yearlong countdown. In Chiapas the town of Tapachula on the Guatemalan border will start a countdown on an 8-foot digital clock in the main park exactly a year before the mysterious date.
In the nearby archaeological site of Izapa, Maya priests will burn incense, chant and offer prayers.
In the tropical jungle of Quintana Roo, between the resorts of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, people are putting messages and photos in a time capsule that will be buried for 50 years. Maya priests and Indian dancers will perform a ritual at the time capsule ceremony.
Yucatan state has announced plans to complete the Maya Museum of Merida by next summer.
"People who still live in Mayan villages will host rites and burn incense for us to go back in time and try to understand the Mayan wisdom," Zaldo said.
The Maya reputation for wisdom has people taking the alleged prediction seriously.
The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy
Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and they wrote that the 13th Baktun ends on Dec. 21, 2012.
The doomsday theories stem from a stone tablet discovered in the 1960s at the archaeological site of Tortuguero in the Gulf of Mexico state of Tabasco that describes the return of a Mayan god at the end of a 13th period.
Believers have taken the end-of-the world fears to the Internet with hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs.
"The Maya are viewed by many westerners as exotic folks that were supposed to have had some special, secret knowledge," said Mayan scholar Sven Gronemeyer. "What happens is that our expectations and fears get projected on the Maya calendar."
Gronemeyer of La Trobe University in Australia compares the supposed Mayan prophecies to the "Y2K" hype, when people feared all computer systems would crash when the new millennium began on Jan. 1, 2000.
For some reason, Gronemeyer says, people have ignored evidence that dates beyond 2012 were recorded.
The blogosphere exploded with more speculation when Mexico's archaeology institute acknowledged on Nov. 24 a second reference to Dec. 21, 2012, on a brick found at other ruins.
"Human beings seem to be attracted by apocalyptic ideas and always assume the worst," Gronemeyer said.
It's all a bit frustrating for serious Mayan researchers whose field has made huge strides in recent years.
"This new historical and archaeological knowledge is so much more interesting and mind-blowing than the fantastical claims about Maya prophecies one sees on TV, books or on the Internet," David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin, said in an email to The Associated Press. "We're dealing with thousands of newly deciphered texts and trying to weave together a coherent picture of Maya history and culture, which to me is as exciting as it gets."
While the 2012 hype might increase interest in the Maya, "that will probably be offset by the long and difficult effort ahead to correct the ubiquitous lies and misconceptions, even after 2012 has come and gone," he wrote.
Jonnie Channell of Albuquerque, New Mexico, says that 2012 "is going to be one of those things where people are definitely going to have to plan," not because of impending apocalypse, but because hotel rooms in the Maya region are probably going to be full.
Channell, who owns Maya Sites Travel Services, is surprised that she already has 24 reservations for three tour packages she is offering to major Mayan ruin sites in the week leading up to the solstice.
She named one "Beginning the New Calendar Era Under the Yucatan Stars."
"We put together these tours, and we've got lots of signups, and people are excited about it," she said. "If anybody think it's going to be the end of the world, then they better stay home."
Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson contributed to this report
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Source: AP
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Introductory Transcription: 'What exactly is happening in 2012? There are are two cycles. One is a cosmic cycle of 300 million years, 250-300 million years. This is the reign of one spiritual king 300 million years. Then there is a human cycle of 5000 years. When we (Masters) went to Mexico side, to the mayans, the aztecs, taught them astronomy and astrology, we taught then these world cycles. What the Mayans are talking about are the human cycle which Sri Yukteswar detailed in his book "The Holy Science". How many of you have read the book The Holy Science? by Jnana Avatar Sri Yukteswar, raise your hands? Okay everybody raise your hands now. Read it! It's called "The Holy Science" by Sri Yukteswar."
"You are not this house of flesh and bone...", "He about whom we know nothing","Make Me Thy Truth, Make Me Thy Love, Eternal Lord of Light"
Take a primitive man from the jungle near the meridian to north-europe in fall and he'll think the world is dying because the trees their leaves are dying... ..not realizing the tree ended a cycle and shall bloom again next spring.
Mayan Documentary Will Show Evidence of Alien Contact, Says Mexico (Exclusive)
EXCLUSIVE
A new documentary about Mayan civilization will provide evidence of extraterrestrial contact with the ancient culture, according to a Mexican government official and the film's producer.
"Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond," currently in production, will claim the Mayans had contact with extraterrestrials, producer Raul Julia-Levy revealed to TheWrap.
"Mexicowill release codices, artifacts and significant documents with evidence of Mayan and extraterrestrial contact, and all of their information will be corroborated by archaeologists," said Julia-Levy, son of actor Raul Julia.
In a release to TheWrap, Luis Augusto Garcia Rosado, the minister of tourism for the Mexican state of Campeche, said new evidence has emerged "of contact between the Mayans and extraterrestrials, supported by translations of certain codices, which the government has kept secure in underground vaults for some time."
He also spoke, in a phone conversation, of "landing pads in the jungle that are 3,000 years old."
Raul-Julia claims there is proof that the Mayans had intended to lead the planet for thousands of years, but were forced to escape after an invasion by "men of dark intentions," leaving behind evidence of an advanced race.
"The Mexican government is not making this statement on their own -- everything we say, we're going to back it up," he said.
The film will be directed by Juan Carlos Rulfo, who won the Humanitas Prize for "Those Who Remain" in 2009 and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for International Documentary for "In the Pit" in 2006. Juan Diego Rodriguez Gonzalez will serve as the Guatemalan executive producer, and Eduardo Vertiz as the Mexican executive producer.
And yes, they expect people to take this seriously, because the messages he plans to impart are crucial to human survival, Julia-Levy insisted.
When Julia-Levy, producer Ed Elbert and co-producer Sheila McCarthy announced the Mexican cooperation with their documentary to TheWrap in August, they were circumspect about claims of alien contact, with Julia-Levy admitting he'd been ordered not to say anything about it.
Also read: Mayan Secrets to Be Revealed by Mexican Government in 2012 Doc
Also for that article, Rosado brushed off a question about alient contact and said his country wa simply offering the filmmakers' access to previously unexplored sections of a Mayan site at Calakmul (left).
Now, not only has Rosado changed his tune, but the Guatemalan government has joined the project, as well, giving access to artifacts and newly discovered prophecies
While the Guatemalan government is not offering information about aliens, it has joined Mexico in supporting the project. "Guatemala, like Mexico, home to the ancient yet advanced Mayan civilization … has also kept certain provocative archeological discoveries classified, and now believes that it is time to bring forth this information in the new documentary," Guatemala's minister of tourism, Guillermo Novielli Quezada, said in a statement.
He said the country was working with filmmakers "for the good of mankind."
Raul-Julia claims that the order to cooperate came directly from the country's president, Alvaro Colom Caballero.
Guatemala is the site of a large number of pre-Columbian Mayan settlements in the Mirador Basin, including the extensive and highly organized city of El Mirador (detail, left; exterior on previous page).
In a curious aspect of the new announcement: Guatemalan minister Quezada is quoted as referring to “'Mirador,' the largest pyramid in the world."
But Mirador is not the name of a pyramid. It's the name of the entire settlement, which includes several pyramids, the largest of which is La Danta -- a fact one would expect the Guatemalan minister to know.
"Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond" begins shooting on Nov. 15 and is due for a theatrical release in late 2012, before the end of the Mayan calendar.
While doomsday scenarios focus on the calendar ending on Dec. 21, 2012, many scholars point out that it simply resets for another 5,126-year cycle on that date.
By Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/26/idUS333894436320110926
Nice add-on to this article.
Thanks to you SolarKid. :)