Mark your calendars and prepare to see something big; “2012” is coming.
But there’s no need to panic ““ it’s not the end of the world, just a film about it. Directed by Roland Emmerich (“The Day After Tomorrow”) and starring John Cusack, Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton, “2012” is one of this year’s most anticipated disaster movies and opens in theaters today.
The premise of “2012,” as the name suggests, was inspired by the prediction of a global doomsday event occurring in 2012 that has recently gained momentum worldwide. According to the Mayan Long Count calendar, the current cycle ends around Dec. 21, 2012, causing some to speculate that 2012 signals the end of the world. Perhaps in part because of the film’s successful viral campaign, there are currently a number of books and self-proclaimed “scientific” Web sites that prophesize a real-life apocalypse similar to the one depicted in the film.
But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“There’s the assumption that just because the calendar ends (in 2012) and because (the Mayans) had a cyclical notion of time that perhaps there was something special about this date that correlates with an apocalypse,” anthropology Professor Dwight Read said. “(But) there’s nothing to indicate that they had associated anything special with the date.”
While various media forms have successfully generated much of the hype and hysteria surrounding 2012, the notion of an apocalypse has always fascinated audiences.
“Before 2012 there was Y2K. People need the world to end. Just like they want a miracle, they also want destruction, sort of like when people drive by an accident and they slow down to look. … We’re just attracted to the morbid,” said Lisa Lucero, a Mayan researcher who got her doctorate in archaeology at UCLA. “When 2012 comes and goes, there’s going to be another cycle; there’s going to be another time period with which to look forward to.”
This human fascination with prophecy is by no means exclusive to people who attach meaning to 2012. Throughout history, humans have made various predictions about the world in which they live, many of them concerning the end of the world.
“The notion of apocalypse is part of Christianity, going back to the Book of Revelations and the New Testament,” Read said. “Some people claim the Scriptures prophesized the end of the world, and some groups claim that it’s supposed to be relatively soon on the basis of biblical Scripture.”
While prophecies are not unheard of, whether they have any grounding in academia is another question.
“People might believe in their prediction, or believe in someone else’s prediction, but … the prediction is (still) no better than a random guess,” Read said.
Sometimes, predictions may come true simply on the grounds of chance.
“We have a lot of stories of the world coming to an end. If a lot of people predict the date of an earthquake, chances are one of them will be right. (But) it’s a fallacy to take a fact and a find and to draw a correlation between the two,” anthropology Professor Charles Stanish said.
Even after factoring in chance, the idea that the world is going to end in 2012 is fairly unlikely. The year does mark the end of a cycle on the ancient Mayan calendar, but what some people may not realize is that the Mayan calendar is cyclical rather than linear, so when one cycle ends, another begins. Lucero likens the process to what happens to an odometer on a car.
“When the odometer goes more than 100,000 miles, it doesn’t automatically self-destruct. … It just starts from zero again. (The) same thing (happens) with the Mayan calendar ““ it just starts up again,” Lucero said. “2012 has nothing to do with the end of the world. It’s just that as a culture we need to feel like we have control over the world, so we plot everything.”
The Mayans’ preoccupation with keeping track of time and marking cycles may have to do with their desire to view their existence in relation to the rest of the world.
“Every culture has origin stories ““ why we’re here, where we came from. It always has to do with God creating people that aren’t perfect at first so they have to be destroyed and then created again,” Lucero said. “One aspect is that there might be destruction, but the other side of the coin is that there’s renewal.”
The world might not end in 2012, but one prediction might ring true: Today is sure to draw some crowds.