Boom. Ahh. Screeching. These are the sounds of human pain, and pain is what every human fears. In modern times, the idea of a doomsday has always been in the mainstream: raptures, meteors, zombie apocalypses. Some have even been made into TV shows. However, there is one doomsday idea that actually had people scared for the date December 21, 2012. What that day meant to a lot of people was the end of the world according to the Mayan Calendar. While many were genuinely afraid of the end of times, most of them were uneducated about what the end of the Mayan calendar actually signified.
The “end” of the calendar is actually not the end of the calendar. The Mayan Calendar has different cycles. For example, the end of the b’ak’tun cycle, the most recent cycle, was December 21, 2012. The entire b’ak’tun cycle lasted for 144,000 days. It was also the end of a cycle of thirteen b’ak’tuns, the beginning of which was on August 11, 3114 B.C.E. That cycle of thirteen b’ak’tuns is called the Long Count, and according to scholars, this literally defined the Classic Period of the Mayan civilization.1
Since the end of the b’ak’tun cycle and the Long Count cycle both coincided on the winter solstice of 2012, many people thought the sun would also align with the equator for the first time in 26,000 years.2 This eventually caused widespread panic; however, there actually was nothing to worry about. Since many people did not know that the end of the calendar only signified the end of a period, they began to freak out as the Gregorian calendar reached closer to that December 21. They began protesting, screaming at everyone “the end is near,” and some people even began stockpiling candles and essentials, and survival shelter sales were ever increasing.3 People then waited, and waited. Finally, the day arrived… and… nothing happened. People were shocked, and life went on. Workplaces and cities kept on their pace, unfazed by the threatening context behind the date.
Many people truly believed this would happen: this day meant death and doom, something people have always been scared of. These people were ready to be taken, for many people felt this was a prophecy of some sort. They thought the readings of Nostradamus, the Book of Revelation, Hopi Prophecy, and others had some truth to them, rendering this idea of a calendar prophesying the end of the world realistic.4 Some anticipated some sort of pick-and-choose session where Jesus would come back to Earth to save His people (Christians) and leave the rest behind.
The meaning of this 2012 phenomenon, now a debunked theory, is that people fantasize about a doomsday; they fear it, for they see it as a real possibility because of both their fantasies and the plethora of theories to read about. The idea of an apocalypse will always be appealing to some, for the end of times can show who a person truly is. Since most of this was widespread online hysteria, and not taken too seriously by most people, with hindsight now, we can see that it was clear that “this wouldn’t happen.”5
Mayan calendar