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Modern Mysteries

Forget 2012 - is the Mayan doomsday this year ?

By T.K. Randall
June 14, 2020 · Comment icon 54 comments

When exactly is the prophesized doomsday ? Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 Bjorn Christian Torrissen
A controversial new theory going around on social media suggests that the Mayan doomsday is actually this year.
There's no denying that 2020 hasn't been the best of years, with wildfires, mass protests and a full-on pandemic making the first six months of the 21st Century's third decade unusually challenging.

Now a new theory doing the rounds on social media has put forward the notion that 2020 could in fact be the actual date of the Mayan doomsday prophecy - the end of the world scenario that became something of a phenomenon all the way back in 2012.

Of course the world didn't end 8 years ago, but what if that's because we got the date wrong ?

According to scientist Paolo Tagaloguin, who posted up a (now deleted) Tweet on the subject, 2020 could in fact be 2012 - at least, that is, if you add up the number of years a certain way.
"Following the Julian Calendar, we are technically in 2012..." he wrote. "The number of days lost in a year due to the shift into Gregorian Calendar is 11 days... For 268 years using the Gregorian Calendar (1752-2020) times 11 days = 2,948 days. 2,948 days / 365 days (per year) = 8 years."

It has even been suggested that, if this is true, the actual doomsday date would be this week.

As before however, there is absolutely no reason to expect any sort of disaster scenario to occur - at least not anything outside of what has already been happening.

The world didn't end in December 2012 and it's not going to end this year either.

Even so, however, 2021 can't come soon enough.

Source: New York Post | Comments (54)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #45 Posted by Jon the frog 4 years ago
The funniest part that our dating system is probably way off with all the alteration and the time needed to implement it... and it's based on a ''date'' that we don't truly know, lol http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/year-history.html
Comment icon #46 Posted by Captain Risky 4 years ago
Fine I accept that. But they still counted years, for some periods of time?
Comment icon #47 Posted by Emma_Acid 4 years ago
No, not really. The Maya calendar cycles are really complicated and are based around ceremonial events, the main one being 52 years long, and they were all measured in days. If you look at the history of time keeping in general, the "day" is the main unit of measurement, not the hour or the year etc. Which makes perfect sense when you think of it.
Comment icon #48 Posted by Captain Risky 4 years ago
Sorry Emma, even thou we agree on most things i believe you're wrong here. The Maya specifically mention 365 days as a measurement. How they wished to express that measurement is another matter. Its not a coincidence or fluke that its a calendar year as we know it. 
Comment icon #49 Posted by stereologist 4 years ago
The Maya use of a 365 day count is an approximation to a year. Unlike other civilizations that also had a 365 day calendar, i.e. ancient Egypt, this was a count of days, not a recognition of a year. In other words they were counting days, not a solar cycle. All of the Mayan calendars were day counts. Other cultures have counted lunar cycles or solar cycles. But the Mayans counted days. Another example of this sort of counting is the Sumerian calendar. It was a complicated affair that counted lunar cycles. But they also adjusted their lunar month counts to approximate a solar cycle. Did they co... [More]
Comment icon #50 Posted by Captain Risky 4 years ago
@Emma_AcidThis is the original quote that got the ball rolling. The Maya were and did count years. This is a fact. It might not have been the primary method of time keeping but it was a method used. They had the capacity and knowledge to and on some level i could see counting years as a method to reach and understand results in another way. You just don't invent a system of counting, leave a record of it and not use it. By definition they counted years. 
Comment icon #51 Posted by stereologist 4 years ago
The Mayans counted days. They did not count years. Show us a date where they did that. They counted days. Your claim of fact seems to be your typical lie. You lie when you state: "but it was a method used" They counted days. By definition they only counted days.   A good part of the problem here is that you don't have a clue about anything. A count of years would be doing that - counting  years. They would be counting from solstice to solstice or from equinox to equinox, but they don't. They don't count trips around the Sun as other civilizations did and still do. They do not count lunar eve... [More]
Comment icon #52 Posted by Desertrat56 4 years ago
The "Mayan doomsday" was a hoax perpetrated by the catholic church to denigrate the science behind the 17 calendars that the Mayans used for different reasons, and to obfuscate the fact that the current Gegorian calendar was updated based on the Mayan Leap day calculations that were more accurate as a solar calendar than the Julian calender. 
Comment icon #53 Posted by Emma_Acid 4 years ago
Yeah this is my point, and I'm pretty sure I did say they had a marker of time that was roughly 365 days. The point being, and the question I was responding to, is that they didn't use the 365 day year as a measure in the way we do.
Comment icon #54 Posted by stereologist 4 years ago
It's too bad two people informing the poster f the same basic idea is far too difficult for them to comprehend. It boggles the mind that this simple concept is so difficult.


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