MEXICO CITY – There’s only 51 weeks before Dec. 21, 2012, the day the Maya say the world will end!
Southeastern Mexico, the heart of Maya territory, plans a yearlong celebration – preparing for the end of the world in December, 2012
Mexico’s tourism agency expects to draw 920 million visitors by next year only to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche. All of Mexico usually lures about 21 million foreigners in a year. Mexican officials believe there will be over 500 million people in Mexico when the world ends.
The Winter Solstice in the coming year, as a time of renewal. Many archeologists believe that the 2012 reference on a 1,300-year-old stone tablet only marks the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar. But Mayan scholars agree that the archeologists are wrong, “the world will end,” said Jimmy Rivera of Harvard University.
“The world will end,” said Ysidri Zabeda, a tourism spokeswoman for the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun. “For us, it is a message of hope. There will be a new world, a better world.”
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,” Zabeda 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.
The blogosphere exploded when Mexico’s archaeology institute acknowledged on Nov. 24 a second reference to Dec. 21, 2012, on a brick found at other ruins.
Jackie Chinell of Albuquerque, New Mexico, says that 2012 “is going to be ‘a trip'”. Channell, who owns Maya Sites Travel Services, is surprised that she already has 1,250 reservations for three tour packages she is offering to major Mayan ruin sites in the week leading up to the solstice.
She named one “Last Days on Earth.”
“We put together these tours, and we’ve got lots of signups, and people are excited about it,” she said. “Our tourists will go out with a big bang.”
im so sick of reading or hearing about the end of the world. i have 4 children and would be absolutely devastated to know i brought them into this world for something so horrible to happen. give it a rest i dont beleive it and i believe only god knows when that will happen, people should be ashamed of themselves
i'm not like this but and i'm not going to be a dick head. so i'm just going to say this. it might happen and then again it might not happen
well if it's a mayan saying it i geuss it may happen. but then again it is just a stone.
if they said it hapened before and never did i doubt it would happen again.
I've lived through quite a number of "end of the world" events, still here to tell the tale!
no……the mayan calender has finished its period….that's all! a new period or a new cycle would begun after that….and nothing else……jus don't believe these theories guyz……its fake…….jus lyk this they said about Illuminatti-which is a powerful group, which has been destroyed centuries ago….but even now they are pointing out that they still exist…..there is no point in that! so, jus don't believe them blindly……….
mayans didnt say that world be ending in 2012,they said that god/aliens will return….
bs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They Also say this Asteroid x999 something! Is also appearing around the world IN precisley
the same date as the Mayan predictions? 21Dec 2012 Is my Birthday! I hope I see it in on a
Beautiful beach.
How old will you be?
Then plan a vacation…Maui has beautiful beaches, you will be fine!
I hope WWN will set up some kind of countdown clock.
So theres gona b a time capsule buried , then opened in 50 years. How if the world is gona end.?. Lmao.
2012 is not the end of the world, it's the time for intergalactic mass alien invasion on the eastern part of the Earth, specially my country.
Really?!?!?
A lot of prophecies written are not necessarily exactly as set by the ancients for the right reasons, one of which is because it can prove bad to hold absolute information; Even then prophecies can be altered as the evolution in social conditions may change due to new incredible developments that can control time and atmospheric conditions – why? I can see another universe with magical like machines beyond humans dreams, astounding human spirits themselves in the immediate areas after dead. Figure out the rest!
WTF?!?
This does not mean the end of the world. If you think about our modern calendar, every year the world would end, simply because it restarts it's cycle. Tonight would be the end of the world, and it's not. I have lived through enough apocalypse, and i'm still alive and laughing.
god night guys
No, the Mayans said their calender was going to end in 2012 in december…i think either the 16 or 26 (don’t remember). Thus this created a rumor of the world ending. Get your facts straight before you go around looking like a dumb a@@.
I know a lot of good people who have passed away, and I am ready to be with them again.
The End is Near….
I do agree with yhe mayan! Bacause they are strong in astrology or calculation…just world would not end but our world would transform from one yuga to another yuga…where again world would start from zero..
i hate u?!?!?!?!?!
I wish i could see all your faces at the end and tell you i told you so, just like i tell other ignorant people. I know it hurts the fact that you haverr kids and family we all do but thats not going to stop the enedeble…
Its not the 'END OF THE WORLD', its the Winter Solstice. Which happens December 20th – 23rd. Google Winter Solstice and read. You have better things to worry about, Obama for another 4 years, "NEW WORLD ORDER".
That is what we all should be aware of!
Of course all you see is comments on how the world is going to end because the site admins want you to think it will because they filter the messages. This site sucks. You should all be ashamed at your stupidity.
Glad to read your article.
I appreciate to your work.
Thanks for the sharing.