Op-Ed Piece

by Aurore Vitela, June 2014

600 words

2 pages

essay

The phenomenon of 21.12.2012 has been actively discussed in society for several previous years. The certain catastrophic events, which have to occur on December 21, 2012, are widely covered by mass media. The phenomenon is actively discussed in society, in particular, in the Internet. Hundreds thousands of web pages are devoted to this subject. The article “Is the end of the world really nigh? Authorities reassure Russians over Mayan Armageddon prophecy amid reports of “unusual behavior”, written by Rob Williams, is an example of the coverage of this event.

“As the 21st of December nears, Russian authorities are attempting to quell fears that the world will come to end amid panic over what some experts claim are the predictions of the Mayan Calendar” (Williams, 2012).

The author points out that the date of 21.12.2012 made people live in fear and horror waiting for it. The phenomenon of 2012 is a complex of eschatological beliefs, according to which there will be a global cataclysm or transformation of the world on the 21st of December, 2012. This date is considered to be the last one in a 5125-year cycle of the Mesoamerican calendar constructed on the basis of the Long Account. Various theories, such as the theory of “galactic alignment”, and numerological formulas were offered, but none of them was recognized in the scientific environment for the justification of this date.

The scientists from various areas of science reject the possibility of any whole-planet cataclysm in 2012. In particular, professional Indians declare that there are no evidences about the approaching death of mankind in one of the remained epigraphic monuments of the classical Maya. The conjectures about the end of the Long Account in 2012 distort the ideas of history and culture of the Maya. Authoritative astronomers and experts from the other areas declared the theories of doomsday to be pseudoscientific as they contradict the data of simple supervision and distract people from urgent problems, such as global warming and a loss of biological diversity.

The Maya never perceived a doomsday as disappearance of all living beings or as a sequence of the global disasters destroying a planet. This concept is not present even in one of 15 thousand ancient inscriptions made by the Maya. One of the found ancient settlements in Tabasco State of Mexico contains the words that the present era will come to the end on December, 21 and a new one will begin. The author represents an apocalyptic look for 2012, which is widespread in media space, where the doomsday or death of a human civilization is planned for December, 21. According to the author of the article, there is also another assumption made by the Tibetan monk Shambala. The end of the world will happen on December 21, 2012.

The Tibetan monk says that the doomsday will not be final, and will last only for 2 weeks. According to his forecasts, on the 21st of December the Earth together with solar system will pass through a galactic “zero strip”. However, …

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