Forget 2000; the real danger will arrive in 2012

The Mayan calendar was based on detailed astronomical observations and stipulated a 5,125 year cycle, according to Peter N. Stearns. In his book, Millennium III, Century XXI: A Retrospective on the Future, Stearns contends that one of the Mayan cycles will end on December 21, 2012. At that time, there will occur what Stearns calls a "transformative vi

Another great Mayan city, Uxmal, also offers a sort of Venusian vista that could be made into more than it actually was, or less. There, a ruin known as the governor's palace hosts another Venus lineup, this one also involving an eight-year cycle. The sightlines involve a phallic stone, "a two-headed jaguar altar, and on the far horizon, rising above the jungle treetops, the line touches the ancient, so far unexcavated, temple mound of Nohpat"(Hawkins 1983 69). Hawkins does not pretend to know what, specifically, all this means. He does contend that "enough clues are left to show the imprint of the cosmos on those civilizations. Astronomical numbers whirled in their minds, and their lives were dominated by the sun, moon, Mars and Venus-Quetzalcoatl" (Hawkins 1983 69)

In fact, the pre-Mayans had mirrors, dull though they now seem to be. Did they make a sort of telescope with mirrors to better view the stars? Hawkins doesn't want to speculate, especially since no object that might have been used as an eyepiece has been found. However, Hawkins notes that:

There was also a fascination in the play of the planets; first was the year of the sun, then the year-step of Venus and so on as each celestial marker appeared in the sky.

Montezuma is one of the best-known of the Mexican/Mayan personalities. Although he was protected by conquistador bodyguards, he was pelted by arrows and stones in one fight and struck down. Although his wounds did not seem serious, he did not recover, laying "as if dead for several days, and then, as morning star Venus was fading and going into conjunction with the sun, he died" (Hawkins 1983 67).

In fact, while not a soothsayer himself, nor, apparently, an out-of-control believer in visitors from outer space, Stearns does suggest, through retelling some of the more outlandish beliefs of the self-proclaimed astroarchaeologists, that there is at least something truthful in the basis for the outlandish beliefs, if not the beliefs themselves.

The Mayan had other concerns, in fact, that make it clear that the movement of the object in the sky, not the cycle of life forms on earth, was the raison d'etre for their calendar. For example, they knew "Mars was a brilliant midnight star every 780 days," (Hawkins 1983 67). Since this was an important celestial marker:

For example, he notes that in 1987, Mexican author Jose Arguelles wrote a book called The Mayan Factor, in which he revived the 2012 date and claimed, as well, that the Mayans were "an extragalactic people who would come back in the waning years of the 20th century to prepare the New Age" (Stearns 1998 112). Now, of course, the millennium has come and gone. The common fear as it approached had more to do with computers running amok, water purification plants being contaminated when their machinery went offline, weeks without access to cash when the banks' computers that had not been 'remediated' seized up and more horror stories. (At the time, we lived about a mile from a huge reservoir, but a neighbor actually asked me what we would do if no water came out of the tap on January 1, 2000. I suggested a walk of about two miles round trip--that's if the car wouldn't start or the gas pumps wouldn't deliver fuel--with bucket in hand.)

This might have been th

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