Well 21st December 2012 has come and gone without world shattering catastrophe!

Why was such catastrophe predicted, and why did it not happen?

The 2012 Phenomenon

The predictions of an end-time apocalypse are based on the end of a 5125 year cycle described by the Mayan calendar. This was then embellished by certain interpretations of astronomical alignments. Many of these where not accepted by mainline scholars.

The fact that so many people have grasped this idea that the world will end on this day and have begun to prepare for this is both tragic and in a sense amusing! Tragic in that people have been beguiled into making preparations for this impending doom, many may well have handed over possessions to tricksters, who preyed on them!

Amusing! In a small sense Yes! That people are so gullible to be taken in by this type of hype which is based on no more than wild speculation!

The Mayan Calendar

The ancient Mayan calendar was linear as opposed to the cyclical calendar used today. A uinal comprised 20 days, 18 uinals then made up a tun, which then made up 360 days. A k'atun comprised 20 tuns and then 20 k'atuns then made up a b'ak'tun, which comprised 394 years!

Mayan mythology describes three previous worlds having been created, each of these a failure! Then the fourth world was created and it was on this world that humans were placed. Another significant fact to consider is that since the Mayan people believed that there were cycles of time before this one, there would be another one to follow this one. And one to follow that one too! To them time would continue, ad infinitum, without end!

Why Nothing Happened!

Why do we continuously seek endings? The Mayan people looked to the future for assurance that things would remain the same! A very different outlook from ours today! Maybe it was because their world did not change all that much.

Ours on the other hand is continuously changing. So perhaps our searching for the end of something gives us a point onto which we can fix our lives to! But with so many predictions being incorrect! How do you figure out what is worth holding onto and what is simply hype!

The simple fact is that nothing happened because nothing was actually predicted to happen! The Mayan calendar did not only point to an end. The end of that particular cycle of time! But by their definition that actually then pointed to the beginning of the next cycle of time!