They’ve predicted the destruction of the world through floods, fires, and comets—luckily for us, none of it has come to pass. Asked why people seem more cognizant of it in 2012, Lepo says: “It just happens to occur on the winter solstice this year. The Popol Vuh describes the gods first creating three failed worlds, followed by a successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. It is possible that only the earliest among Mesoamericans observed solstices, [95] but this is also a disputed issue among Mayanists. It could be that slow changes taking place over the course of many decades do not grip the imagination of paranoiacs the way sudden cataclysmic events can, never mind the respective scientific plausibility of each.

Halley’s comet passes by the Earth approximately every 76 years, but the nearness of its approach in 1910 created fear that it would destroy the planet, either by a celestial collision or through the poisonous gasses it was rumoured to contain.

Two items in the Maya classical corpus do mention the end of the 13th bʼakʼtun: Tortuguero Monument 6 and La Corona Hieroglyphic Stairway 12.

Mesoamerican countries that once formed part of the Maya civilization—Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—all organized festivities to commemorate the end of bʼakʼtun 13 at the largest Maya sites. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. This belief was supposedly supported by observations that the Earth's magnetic field was weakening, [116] which could precede a reversal of the north and south magnetic poles, and the arrival of the next solar maximum, which was expected sometime around 2012. The Book of the Life of the Ancient Mexicans, Containing an Account of Their Rites and Superstitions: An Anonymous Hispano-Mexican Manuscript Preserved at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Italy.There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012," said Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone. I'm astonished how many people are really worried that we might have a second sun or even an entire second solar system due to hit Earth in the next week or month. Most modern Maya were indifferent to the ceremonies, and the small number of people still practising ancient rites held solemn, more private ceremonies. The Mayan fire ceremony held at dawn in Tikal on 21 December 2012, took place in the main plaza in front of the Temple of the Great Jaguar.

The villagers are exasperated: the exaggerated importance of something which they see as completely removed from reality is bewildering.Evo Morales criticó al sistema capital durante celebración maya" [Evo Morales criticized capitalism during Mayan celebration]. Many of my books are about planetary protection issues and also human exploration and other topics in astronomy.

But work by Yeomans and other scientists has resulted in identification of some 94 percent of space bodies large enough to be a global threat. From hiding in bomb shelters to sharpening their survival skills, doomsday theorists are preparing for judgment day, which the Mayan calendar predicts will take place on Friday. Jenkins said that precession would align the Sun precisely with the galactic equator at the 2012 winter solstice. Hundreds of pamphlets announcing the coming flood were issued and set in motion a general panic; Count von Iggleheim, a German nobleman, went so far as to build a three-story ark. Lars von Trier's 2011 film Melancholia featured a plot in which a planet emerges from behind the Sun on a collision course with Earth.

The Tortuguero monument connects the end of the 13th bʼakʼtun with the appearance of Bʼolon Yokteʼ Kʼuh, shown here on the Vase of Seven Gods. On 14 December 2012, a man in Henan province attacked and wounded twenty-three children with a knife. Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, said, "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," and, "The 2012 phenomenon is a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.