doomsday 2012

[Undertoad]

Did an ancient, barbarian society somehow have access to some special knowledge that we now don't have? And somehow we can't find out with our wealths of information, ability to share knowledge, scientific understanding?

Maybe about some things, but about the end of the world, I would doubt that. To have either prior knowledge of what the apocalpyse is -- or the perfect ability to predict the future -- that's a tall order man. Prior knowledge of the very day of the apocalypse would suggest time travel, precision astronomy, or a message from the aliens. The perfect ability to predict the future would suggest time travel or some sort of bizarre psychic power shared across an entire culture that we are currently unaware of.

And then, to have any one of these abilities and yet still be entirely dominated by the incoming Europeans... bad karma man! Couldn't they have used their special thing, whatever it is, against the white man? Call the aliens back, hey your plan wasn't supposed to include us getting offed, right? What do you mean this time travel thing can only do centuries, we need to erase the battle we lost last night!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Maybe they didn't all get offed by whitey, maybe they just traveled to the future.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Did an ancient, barbarian society somehow have access to some special knowledge ... Maybe about some things, but about the end of the world, I would doubt that ...

That end of the world theory is ridiculous. The Maya subsistence economy was based fundamentally on corn. When their civilization began to decline, they speculated about when there would be a resurgence of a corn based utopia. For reasons yet to be ascertained, they settled on 12/21/12. As it turns out, this happens to be about when technology will give us engines that run efficiently on corn products providing us with unlimited power, luxury, and free time. The Maya figured that people would then need something to do; so, they left it to us to make our own calendar.

Another mystery solved.

[ZenGum]

Screw the Mayan Calendar, my desk calendar runs out on December 31 2008! Holy crap guys that gives us barely 11 months! The End Is NIGH!
And this isn's some ancient, out of date thingy from some technologically underdeveloped people, this is a recent production using the best human society has to offer. I'm really worried.


Edit: Ok, don't panic. I found another page showing that there will in fact be a 2009. We've got some breathing space for the aliens to come and save us.