Just the same as if it exploded next week.
The "Mayan stuff" is pretty straightforward once you ignore the flannel:
Mayan religion includes the belief that the world started on the 11th of August, 3114 BC (using our calendar).
This is day 1 of the Mayan long calendar, unsurprisingly.
The Mayan long calendar counts days.
The Mayan long calendar has a standard format (i.e. base system used, number of digits).
This means that the calendar has a cycle, after which the date returns to a previous figure. It's like using a 4-digit format in base 10 for counting years (as we do). When 9999 years have passed since the start of the calendar, it cycles back to year 1 (or, more likely, people add an extra digit).
The Mayan long count calendar completes a cycle every couple of million days. I can't be bothered to work out the exact figure - the Mayans used a mixture of number bases in their 5-digit dating system and it's more bother than I want to spare for this silly thread. Feel free to calculate it for yourself - the information required is online.
Count the couple of million days from the 11th of August, 3114 BC and you get the 20th of December 2012.
Just as you would if you used that 4-digit base 10 format for counting years after 10,000 years had passed.
Unsurprisingly, the Mayans also realised that you'd need to add extra numbers to count past one calendar cycle without confusion. So they did.
The claims about the significance of the Mayan long calendar cycle don't even stem from the Mayans. They're much more recent than that, stemming from modern times.
Last edited:
