This is a few years old, but damn, it sure is fitting this year.
I really wish people would stop with the 2012 bullshit. The Mayan calendar ran 12 and 50 year cycles forming a special much larger cycle. There civilization was destroyed around the end of their last one so it shouldn’t be surprising that they only bothered working things out 500 years in advance. It’s nothing more than the end of the time they calculated for their calendar. Besides, even if they had predicted that it was going to be the end of the world, who cares? Would you take an old prophecy seriously from a civilization that didn’t even have the wheel?
(Thanks to Wesley for the link)
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No. I don't think I would take a prophecy from an ancient civilization that didn't have a wheel.
You probably know this, but the original 2012 doomsday thing didn't start with the Mayans. It started as an alien prophecy forecasting doom in 2003. When that failed to happen they looked for anything semi-mystical that was going to go down afterwards and came across the Mayan Calendar running out, so they pegged it to that.
It's all for books. I'm 99% sure the people writing books about 2012 don't believe it themselves. They're just doing it to earn books that they can easily push out without an iota of research. Hell, give me 4 days on Google and I could write a 2012 book forecasting doom and gloom and even create an new implausible scenario: In 2012, the Blackholes in MULTIPLE galaxies will align, emitting dark energy crystal neutrino boson wave dynamic anti-biofields causing all the water in the world to be sucked into space! (insert something to do with the magic fields affecting water memory here) Here, Quick! Donate 1000 dollars so that I can help build a container to stop all the water from escaping, and I'll give you a sip of my water when nothing is left! I've even "invented" some magic containers utilizing Ancient Chinese/Japanese/Native American/Mayan/Inuit technology that will keep the water from flying into space! The Mayans forecasted this water disaster, so surely they invented something to stop the water from disappearing, right? You too, can keep water on Earth by sending 800 dollars (per container) to 1800-GULIBLE today!
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Sorry it took me so long to respond, but I was quite ill when you left this comment. You're wrong about the Mayan prophesy. Sure, it may have gained ground in 2003 after the failed alien prophecy, but I remember as a child in the mid-1990s watching a National Geographic video about the Mayans and clearly remember them talking about the Mayan prophecy being that the world would end on December 13, 2012. However, that's based on a misunderstanding of how the Mayan calendar works. What they predicted was that December 13, 2012 would be a year of destruction marking the end of an age. They viewed life and the universe as never ending cycles, one age is destroyed and comes to an end, then its replaced by another.