Even the most distant from history and astronomy, a person probably heard about the famous Mayan prophecy, according to which life on Earth should end in a grand cataclysm, and as soon as possible: December 21, 2012. Such a sad ending of humanity is supposedly predicted in the calendar of the ancient highly developed Mayan people, whose priests reached unprecedented heights in such exact sciences as mathematics and astronomy.
As usual, inexperienced in science, or even simply ignorant people, greedy for all sorts of sensations, willingly picked up this stunning information. Some of them quite seriously believed that the end of the world was coming. But what is the Mayan calendar? And on the basis of what such a sad conclusion was made?
These ancient Indians used a very complex system of time reckoning, which was based on cycles consisting of thirteen segments (baktuns) of 144,000 days. And the end of the last of the cycles falls just on December 21 of this year, of course, when the Mayan system is superimposed on our time system. In the surviving Maya manuscripts, as well as in the texts carved on the walls of their pyramids and other structures, there are very vague interpretations such as: "Then a new era will come", or "This will be the end of previous eras." Agree, such phrases (especially in translation from the ancient extinct language) can be interpreted as you like. One can only be surprised that, on the basis of such evidence, all sorts of frivolous statements, speculations about an allegedly imminent grand cataclysm have spread.
Of course, this is just ridiculous. Moreover, recently archaeologists have found a previously unknown Mayan city in the jungle of the Latin American country of Guatemala. And there, on the wall of one religious building, another calendar was discovered, executed in the form of a fresco. According to experts, this calendar was compiled no later than the ninth century AD and covers a period of about seven thousand years. This fact alone leaves no stone unturned from the theory of the end of the world, as if predicted by the ancient Mayan priests.
There is no doubt that new archaeological expeditions will find new calendars of this amazing people. After all, the Maya Indians lived on a very large area, covering the territory of such modern states as Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and the entire Yucatan state of the state of Mexico. They are covered with dense tropical forests, in the depths of which there are probably still found Mayan cities. With new wall calendars, each of which will surely push the end of the world to a new date. So gullible people, already prepared for the end of the world, can breathe a sigh of relief.
