<p>Hey.......I was surfing the web and somehow....just somehow I stumbled upon some site discussing how the Mayans predicted the end of days to be December 21, 2012! It also said some crap like other civilizations like china and egypt including nostradomus predicted this date or something. Some of you know incredibly great amounts of things........what have you heard about this?? :( </p>
<p>Sorry.....just a REALLY random thought with NOTHING to do about harvard!</p>
<p>Ah yes two years to have fun with our college degrees :)</p>
<p>No, seriously what have you heard about this....CALLING ALL HISTORY MAJORS!!!</p>
<p>I believe only the Mayans predicted that date--it's the day their calendars end. But I could be wrong :p</p>
<p>Yeah, I studied this at one point when I did an independent project on the Mayan Calendar (6th grade lol). I'll probably be wrong on this stuff. I think Guitar_Man will know the rest. lol</p>
<p>The Mayans were definitely star gazers. They knew a tremendous amount about astronomy and everything like that. They also has this weird complex calendar that had two parts: Long and Short. Their Long Count calendar ends on the date you pointed out. While our calendars are continuous and have no end, their complex system has this end built into it for the winter solstice, 2012.</p>
<p>This was happening 2300 years ago or something. They also had this thing called the Sacred Tree, which is the crossing point of the ecliptic (the path of the sun as seen from Earth during a year) and the Milky Way. It was in a lot of their old drawings and was the focal point of a lot of their society, I think. They could see that the sun was moving toward the center of the Sacred Tree, and they calculated that on the winter solstice of 2012 the sun would be in the center of the crossing point of the ecliptic and the Milky Way.</p>
<p>That's the day that they say aliens will invade Earth (apocalypse) on the series finale of The X-Files (yeah that's a nerdy fact, I know). I think it was associated with the Mayans on that show though...</p>
<p>...And for some reason this was the end of society. I think that they saw all of astronomy (which was basically all their society did) culminating in this event. Then, like, the Heavens would open up along that line or something. I don't know! :)</p>
<p>And I don't think this date was predicted by anyone else, but maybe. I was depending on Guitar to know all of this. Haha.</p>
<p>Terra--Actually, I remember that too, haha. Oh, that show was so great at one point. When we were, like, 10. ~sigh~</p>
<p>And sorry corranged, I actually know very little about it. One thing I can say is I'm pretty sure only the Mayans predicted it and if anyone else did, then it was because both civilizations saw the same astrological (NOT astronomical, lol) signs, not because of some weird coincidence ;)</p>
<p>I was going to write astrological! And then I started thinking about, like, horoscopes, so I changed it. You can probably tell I'm not a science person. :)</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm looking into it and have no idea what it's about. But being a huge x-files buff, I am SO waiting for this day...lol. Google it, lots of cool stuff that might happen then :p</p>
<p>I used to love the X-Files...I was so sad when it ended. Haven't seen an episode in a while though...</p>
<p>Speaking of religion and such, have any of you heard of the Thomas Gospels or Dead Sea Scrolls?</p>
<p>Yup.</p>
<p>(were we talking about religion? kind of, i guess lol)</p>
<p>I was watching this special once and according to the bible code, the world is going to end in 2012 too! lol</p>
<p>Haha. That's ********.</p>
<p>I read somewhere that the 266th Pope would be the antichrist...</p>
<p>And, Benedict is number 265. So, that is scary...</p>
<p>I'm sad this got moved here. :(</p>
<p>Do you remember where you read that, Circles?</p>
<p>P.S. My ***s were the word BS.</p>
<p>Yeah that's supposedly the prophecy of St. Malachy. But like with most "prophecies", people will always stretch events to make them fit the prophecy.
And actually, the current pope is number 266. Malachy does not assign any number to the one he calls "Petrus Romanus", so there may be any number of popes in between 266 and Petrus Romanus, or they may be the same person.</p>
<p>I forget...</p>
<p>You can Google or Wiki it, though.</p>
<p>You know what else is scary?</p>
<p>I just got a "blue screen of death" when trying to Google this stuff...</p>
<p>Well, I should elaborate - the numbering of the popes varies from list to list. St. Malachy lists Pope Benedict as 267. The Catholic Encyclopedia website lists him as 266. I've seen others listing hiim as 265.
I'm a bit too lazy to go through each entry of each list to see which pope they don't include.</p>