I just finished reading an okay book (Apocalypse 2012) that explores the whole 12/21/2012 hype by a very respected natural science journalist. The first half of the book was really good, going over mostly factual information that was easy to cross-reference. The second half of the book was all religiousness and spirituality bullshit, which was a disappointing turn.
Either way, most of you have the story wrong....That date is the end of the long count calendar, the second longest calendar the Mayans had, out of like 20-30 different calendars. Their calendars were based on tracking cycles, like gestation cycles for people and important livestock, planetary motions, solar and lunar patterns, geological patterns and much larger scale astronomical patterns.
The long count calendar is roughly 5,125 years long. The parent calendar to the long count calendar is put together by 5-cycles of the long count calendar, this equals roughly 26,000 years and is the cycle of precession for Earth. Precession is the period of time it takes for the axis of a rotating object to go through it's own rotation. SO, the axis the earth rotates on rotates it's own axis every 26,000 years.
The Maya broke that cycle into 5 smaller cycles (the long count calendar); apparently they chose 5 cycles for no reason other than they believed there were 5 basic elements to the universe, fire, earth, air, water and ether. The 5 cycles take place in that order. So by their view Dec. 21 2012 is Not the end of the world, it is the end of the fourth long count, the Water cycle, and the beginning of the fifth long count, the Ether cycle. In their tradition the Ether cycle is supposed to be an age of enlightenment, but also the loss of ignorance and the illogical. In their folklore the Ether cycle is when knowledge reigns and the unrighteous and disillusioned suffer or are lost.
The Mayans were not doomsday believers and were not a death-obsessed culture. They believed that everything took place in cycles, including time. Additionally, death was not something they feared like most modern cultures, it was a valued and revered part of life, part of the cycle of life, not the end of a linear process.
Someone in one of the other posts mentioned their doubt that a culture that old and that long-gone could've possibly calculated such cycles as the solar flare cycles. But not only did they calculate them but their calculations were more precise than western calculations were up until the advent of electronic calculators. Their solar calendar (as in the calendar year) was accurate to within 22 minutes! They were a math and astronomy obsessed society whose abilities were far beyond anyone else's. They had an understanding of calculus that we didn't have until 1,000 years after they were gone. They had calcualted Pi to like the 6th decimal place which took us until like the 18th century or something. Their understanding of math and astronomy was enormous and should be respected, not doubted. It is well documented and accepted by the anthropological and archealogical fields.
Lastly, the ide of the galatic plane intersection is a misinterpretation of the fact that on Dec. 21 2012, the sun will eclipse the center of the galaxy from Earth. Odd coincidence or non-coincidence, it is an example of accepting that dead and lost cultures could have very well understood things that we do not yet.
