THE MAYA WERE WRONG?

A native population of 600,000 lives in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.  They are Catholics.  And they are descendants of the Maya and representatives of one of the world's oldest civilizations.

Who are the Maya?

Information about the Maya -- one of the most mysterious peoples in history  is still hidden in the impenetrable jungles of Central America.  So who are the Maya?  Where did they come from?  Have they left any information for our generation?

For more than 200 years after the ruins of the famous Maya city of Palenque were discovered in 1773, researchers and writers have been looking for answers to these questions.  The city, where excavations continue to this day, is at risk of being overgrown by the jungle.  Its pyramids, temples and palaces, built with white travertine, are just as awe-inspiring as the Renaissance-era wonders of the New World.  The history of the city started to become clearer only in the second half of the 20th century, when deciphering began of the writings with which the Maya decorated the walls of buildings.

In contrast to modern people, the Maya owned only the things which were necessary for survival.  They tilled their land with primitive tools to grow corn and other cereals.  At the same time, their rulers, dressed in luxurious vestments, personally conducted very unusual and frightening ceremonies to ask the gods to make the land more fertile.  Mayan society was divided into estates.  Everyone - from peasants to rulers - knew their place in society.  But these estates were different from those in Europe.

The Maya were knowledgeable astronomers.  They believed that they lived in the fifth era of the Sun, and that during the preceding four eras, four races had replaced one another.  All those cultures perished in powerful cataclysms and only a few survived to pass their knowledge onto the next generation.  According to the Mayan calendar, the modern era opened on 12 August 3114 BCE and will end on 22 December 2012.

Although many books have been written about the Maya, no one can explain the origins of their calendar or the sources of the dates it gives.  The calendar's structure and the reasons why the Maya created a very complex chronological system remain unclear to this day.

By modern standards, the Mayan civilization can be considered primitive.  They did not have sophisticated mechanisms or implements.  However, they excelled in other ways.  Recent research has shown that the Maya successfully acquired and developed their knowledge to an extent difficult to imagine even today.

Like the Australian aboriginals, they believed that everything they saw in their dreams enabled them to predict the future and interpret the present.  Although they did not have telescopes and other devices, the Maya could calculate very accurately the trajectories of the planets and celestial bodies.  At the same time, they were very religious and, like Christians of the medieval period, believed in the need to check their carnal desires and they were not afraid of giving up their lives to achieve bliss in an afterlife.

The secret of the disappearance of the Maya civilization has not been solved yet either.  This happened more than 1000 years ago.  The Maya left behind a great many pyramids and unique inscriptions in the deserts and jungles of Central and South America.  Some people say that the reason for the disappearance of one of the most interesting civilizations in history was an unprecedented drought which continued for 150 years.  Using wells which were drilled to study sediments in the southern part of the Caribbean Sea, it was established that in roughly the 810s, 860s and 910s CE there were great droughts which even forced the Maya to abandon their cities.

In the opinion of Professor Gerald Haug, reduced precipitation for a century resulted in a general shortage of resources in the region, and the droughts that followed made the situation worse.

Water was very important for the Maya.  They collected rainwater in reservoirs and built extensive networks of channels and irrigation.  Although the long drought did not lead to mass casualties in small villages, it was deadly for large, densely populated cities.

It is also believed that long wars with powerful states to which they owed allegiance, epidemics, intensive land use, or a combination of all these factors, were detrimental to the Maya.

The Maya had their own system of calculus.  They could chart the movements of stars and planets.  They had extensive trade relations.  At the same time, they performed religious rituals which involved human sacrifice.

The history of the Maya spans millennia.  From 250 to 750 CE, the population increased and rose from 3 to 13 million people.

End of the world?

Web sites have often published of late alarming warnings about the end of the world.  These are based on statements by Baba Vanga [a blind Bulgarian clairvoyant], Nostradamus's verses about future developments and, most importantly, on the mysterious Mayan calendar.  There is quite widespread speculation that a planet called Nibiru will collide with the Earth in 2012 and put an end to human civilization.  The US National Aeronautics and Space Agency supplied answers to the 12 main questions about the "end of the world" to dispel fears.  It was signed by David Morrison, a senior researcher at the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

The answer to the question "What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?" is this:  

"The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed towards Earth.  Zecharia Sitchin, who writes fiction about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, claimed in several books (e.g., The Twelfth Planet, published in 1976) that he had found and translated Sumerian documents identifying the planet Nibiru, which orbited the Sun every 3600 years.  These Sumerian fables include stories of "ancient astronauts" visiting Earth from a civilization of aliens called the Anunnaki. Then Nancy Lieder, a self-declared psychic, who claims she is channelling aliens, wrote on her website Zetatalk that the inhabitants of a fictional planet around the star Zeta Reticuli warned her that the Earth was in danger from Planet X or Nibiru.  This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened then, doomsday was moved forward to December 2012.  Only recently have these two fables been linked to the end of the Mayan long-count at the winter solstice in 2012 - hence the prediction that December 21, 2012 is doomsday.  According to the Mayans, this was to take place between 20 and 23 December.  The whole 2012 disaster scenario is a hoax, fuelled by ads for the Hollywood science-fiction disaster film "2012". I can only hope that most people are able to distinguish Hollywood film plots from reality."

The name "Nibiru" was also used by Babylonian astrologists and is linked by researchers to the altar of the god Marduk.  The Enuma Elish tablets, which were written in 668-627 BCE, mention this.

But the Sumerian civilization existed long before that in the 14th and 13th centuries BCE.  All their cultural monuments belong precisely to that period.  Sitchin's hypothesis that the planet Nibiru was discovered by the Sumerians has no logical scientific proof.  True, the Sumerian civilization had an extensive literary tradition, advanced agriculture for the period, a well-developed urban infrastructure and very fine literary works.  Unfortunately, however, very little documentary evidence has reached us to support their achievements in astronomy.  It can be said with confidence that the Sumerians had no idea, not only that Neptune, Uranus and Pluto exist, but also that the planets orbit the Sun.  The first ideas about heliocentricism developed some 2,000 years after the disappearance of the Sumerian civilization.

Not one of the numerous (more than 350,000) objects emitting ultraviolet radiation discovered by NASA in 1983, is the planet Nibiru within the borders of the Solar system.  They are all distant galaxies.  In conclusion, Nibiru is a fiction because in view of the present level of development of astrophysics, the existence of a 10th planet in our solar system could not go unnoticed.

The Mayan calendar, which is often cited by augurs of the end of the world, was not designed to predict the future, it is a glimpse into the past.  It is known that the Mayan calendar was much more complex than ours and, it has to be admitted, determined the duration of the annual cycle much more accurately.  But that is not enough for making predictions.  The unfounded speculations about the end of the world were caused by the fact that the extended period in the Mayan calendar ended in 2012.  In lay terms, the large ring of nebulae in our galaxy is called a "black hole."  That ring hides the centre of our galaxy from us.  But that is not the only way this ring influences people.  We can find on the internet that in 2012, there will be immense solar storms on the Sun, and this will result in a reversal of the Earth's magnetic poles....

Indeed, solar activity does reach a peak once every 11 years.  During the peak periods, there are huge explosions and coronal flashes on the Sun.  But this does not pose a threat to humanity.  Only astronauts who are on spacewalk missions or on the surface of the Moon are at risk.  Sometimes solar explosions can temporarily jam radio signals or cause glitches in the operation of electronics on the Earth's artificial satellites.

As for the magnetic field, it should be noted that this field protects people from solar explosions too.  However, there are no grounds for predicting any changes to the Earth's magnetic poles in the near future.  Researchers say that changes take place approximately once in 400 years.

There are also rumours that the Earth is to collide with a meteorite in 2012.  But collisions with large space objects are very rare phenomena.  The last one took place 65 million years ago and is believed to have resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.