If, for argument’s sake, these prophesies are wrong, are we wrong to brood about the world’s end?

Quite the contrary. As we have just observed, Planet Earth lives in a shooting gallery, its interior is a species-killing bomb waiting to detonate and humanity itself is capable of species-wide annihilation, including self-annihilation. We have enough nuclear weapons to destroy ourselves many times over, and the genetically-engineered plague viruses could also end civilization as we know it. We can never spend too much time planning for catastrophe-prevention and consequence-management.

Robert Heinlein said that “earth is too small and fragile a basket for humanity to put all its eggs in.” Many scientists have argued that for humanity to survive the next millennium, we must spread our species into space—onto other planets.

If nothing else, the Mayan prophesy of 2012 should be viewed as a profoundly important wake-up call, the ultimate cautionary tale.

What could the Maya have known that we don’t?

The answer to that question goes back to the basic premise of how our universe operates:

Everything operates in a circle.

What goes around, comes around.

Which means that whatever they saw . . .

Will return!


-- Could the Mayans have discerned the nature of our 12/21/2012 cataclysm?

They could have conceivably witnessed a passing asteroid, whose approach we’re ignorant of, and surmised it would return and visit its violence on the earth on . . . 12/21/2012.

-- How would the Maya have viewed such a celestial visitor?

They say all celestial objects as gods, none of whom were benign in their attitudes toward humankind. Quetzalcoatl was viewed as the friendliest, but he was defeated and displaced in the heavens by a black god of the death and the everlasting night,Tezcatlipoca. The Maya believed that when the 2012 Long-Count Calendar ran out, Tezcatlipoca would smash the heavenly gates, that he and his infernal legions would scorch the Underworld Road which leads via the constellation, Sagittarius, and scourge the earth—and their final scorching scourge would be our Last Day, the One World’s Last Day . . . 12/21/2012.

How knowledgeable were the Maya and their sister cultures?

The ancient Mesoamerica Maya-Azteca cultures were more advanced in the science of astronomy than their contemporaries in Europe and Asia. They even took astronomy into consideration how they laid out the core of their cities, placing buildings not just taking into consideration the four cardinal directions but placing obser
vatories strategically to study the sky.

No other ancient society recorded as accurate observations of celestial phenomena as the Maya (and later the Azteca) did, and they measured time with obsessively elaborate precision. Their Long-Count Calendar, which predicts our world will come to an end on 2012, was infinitely more advanced than anything the Old World had when Cortez conquered the Aztecs militarily in the 16th century.

-- Did their astronomical observations have a practical purpose?

In some regards, they did. In ancient times, the sky was an integral part of daily life – people looked to the sky not just to see whether they needed an umbrella, but for guidance on how to cross a sea, the route caravans took, when crops were to be planted and harvested, and even to predict future events.

Is humankind more vulnerable to mass extinction that species from earlier periods?

Humanity is far more vulnerable to extinction events. In the past, life on the planet only had to worry about natural disasters. But when the dinosaurs passed, the mammals were able to rise, chief among them homo sapiens – a life form clever enough to be able to engineer its own mass extinction through nuclear weapons, chemically-induced climate change and genetically-engineered pandemics.

We must fear ourselves even more than natural catastrophes.

-- What do the Maya and the Toltecs in APOCALYPSE 2012 have to teach us about coping with global catastrophe?

The Maya faced and went through almost everything that our world is experiencing today, including religiously-motivated wars, climate change which produced the sorts of drought-driven food and water scarcity which now plagues Asia and Africa, particularly India. They faced internecine class conflict fueled by escalating inequities between the ruling and the laboring classes.

They faced the same tensions that many theocratic nations face today—the eternal conflict between science and religion. As drought ravaged their croplands, their religious/political leaders demanded not technological advances and organized efforts to improve food production and alleviate water scarcity but massive sacrifices of blood and treasure consecrated to their sky gods, including en masse human sacrifices. If the Mayans and their sister civilizations had put that effort into additional aqueducts, new irrigation systems and crop diversification, they might not have gone under. Instead they cut out hearts and hacked off heads.

Sites near Chichen Itza and Tulum.

Hi Craig:

You asked about sites near Chichen Itza and Tulum. Coba is also in the area of Chichen and Tulum. It is not a postcard picture perfect site like Chichen, but it not only has the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan, its architectural style is much more Mayan than Chichen, which has a Toltec appearance.

Thanks,
Bob Gleason

Do all the natural apocalyptic threats emanate out of the heavens?

--

Many of them do. Not only comets and asteroids threaten humankind but apocalyptic solar storms in our own sun could end civilization as could a nearby star turning supernova. A major collision with black hole—such as the one at our galaxy’s core—could prove lethal for life on earth . . . particularly if that collision involved another black hole.

Some of humanity’s worst threats, however, come from the earth’s bowels, where many mythologies have believed hell resides. It turns out those mythologies were right. Supervolcanos—whose colossal calderas are measured in terms of square miles, sometimes tens of square miles—are scattered around the earth, and their explosive potential is earth-shattering. One supervolcano in Lake Toba, Indonesia detonated 74,000 years ago. Blanketing the earth in ash and flaming ember, it destroyed 90 percent of homo sapiens. The rest found themselves in a world of sunless blackened skies, the air choked with drifting volcanic debris. They must have truly thought they were in hell—and they were.

Most are under or near the sea, but one landlocked supervolcano is in America’s Yellowstone Park and is due to detonate every 600,000 years. The last time it blew was 640,000 years ago, so it’s 40,000 years overdue—and it’s making its impatience known. Groaning, sobbing, roaring, occasionally erupting, the pressure inside its magma chamber has increased dangerously during the last decade—to unprecedented levels. Eventually its chamber-roof will detonate, and the volcanic mountain will again blow apart with the force and velocity of a crashing asteroid and 100,000 thermonuclear bombs. Melting, demolishing and devouring the surrounding mountains, the explosion will expand its already massive cauldron-shaped volcanic crater, currently 34 by 45 miles. This vast depression is called “the Yellowstone Caldera”—or by tourists, “Yellowstone Park.”
The last time the Yellowstone supervolcano blew, it ejected 1,000 cubic kilometers of flaming hell into the atmosphere, which, coming down, buried North America in two meters of smoldering debris. That detonation had also effectively exterminated many of the world’s life forms and plunged the planet into black, volcanic winter . . .
-- Can we do anything to mitigate supervolcano disasters?
Some scientists believe sophisticated slant-drilling could syphon off the caldera’s pressure. Testing that thesis would require a lot of work, and money however. So far, we have no workable computer models.

Should we worry about global annihilation on 2012 for scientific reasons?

Yes, because it’s happened before. Science has identified 20 times during which earthly life has faced a “mass extinction event” caused by a natural phenomena. On some occasions over 90 percent of the life forms on the planet was wiped out.

Extinction of one life form to make room for the next is the way life has evolved on Earth. For instance, the dinosaurs’ extinction made possible the emergence and eventual domination of mammals . . . none of which is all that comforting if yours is the species facing extermination.

-- Does the fact it happened in the past mean it will happen again?

Absolutely – because many threats are cyclical in nature: Asteroid strikes, rise of poisonous atmospheric gases such as methane, geological upheavals such as super-volcanic detonations, ice ages and other radical climate changes are all events that occur in cycles.

It’s been said that life is a circle – and in many respects the universe operates that way. A good example of that is the near-miss asteroid on March 3, 2009. This chunk of speeding space rock was the size of the one that destroyed 800 square miles of Siberian forest in the early 1900s. This one swept “darn close,” as a JPL scientist put it. If it had hit a major metro area like New York or L.A., millions would have died.

The most frightening thing is that we only had about two days notice when it suddenly appeared closer to earth (about 48,000 miles) then most of our satellites . . . and it is coming back for another shot at us.

Five years ago a major asteroid missed the earth by only 4,000 miles, and we had only 19 hours warning.

In 2036 a massive planet-killing asteroid is estimated to have 1 in 5500 in hitting us. Given the scope and duration of its orbit, that impact is “too close to call.”

In 2013 the US will have a chance to approach the asteroid and attach a transponder to it, after which we could monitor its 2036 approach with scientific precision. We would have to begin that mission immediately, which no one is doing. The US seems indifferent to a potential extinction event 27 years from now.

Something even bigger could be coming at us and we are unable to spot it because space objects are tracked as they race across the line of sight – ones that come directly at us are not seen until they are almost on top of us.